The Romance of War

Long ago armies were personal things, the private tools of the rich and powerful.

During the Dark Ages in Europe, dukes, barons, earls, and other various lords and highborns would dip into their coffers and raise an army composed of their own sworn men, knights errant (kind of the medieval version of Blackwater Security), and the general peasantry. Then they'd march off in search of conquest or the throne or the holy land. War was the purview of nobles, and all real lords embarked on such endeavors in the name of God, or chivalry, or boredom. When it was over, they'd come home and hang their swords above the mantel in the Great Hall and drink and boast and tell tales of honor and glory. And things would be good for a while, not just because they'd come home with loot to refill their treasuries, but because a lot of the knights errant and a rather large number of the peasantry were left behind on battlefields of England and France or along the pilgrim trail to Jerusalem, rotting in the sun, and no longer a burden on the local economy. And while tragic to the common man, the nobility viewed these things as romantic. The peasantry was exactly that, and not worth a second thought - they were simply pawns in a lord's quest for glory.

As time passed and the world changed, standing armies became the domain of nations and not highborn men. Though the custom of personal armies did linger on for many years. And up until very recently it was common, both in Europe and here in the United States, for the rich and powerful to buy their way into military service. During the US civil war, a rather large number of Colonels and Generals (both North and South) bought their ranks and uniforms, or they bought their sons a lieutenancy. For the rich and powerful, military service was not viewed as a duty, but rather a romantic privilege of the highborn - just as it had been among the lords of medieval Europe. Some of these men were notably less successful with their commissions than others, many came home after the war shattered and disillusioned - but some were successful, and they came home in triumph and built empires of commerce and industry. Successful or not, many, like the lords before them, viewed themselves as better than those of the lower classes. Born into power and wealth, they returned to it, hung their swords above the mantel, comforted themselves with the smug belief that they were superior to those they'd left rotting on the battlefield. They came down from their lofty perches only to go on safari, or travel Europe, or cross the oceans in first class luxury. They smoked cigars and drank fine port wine and told tales around the Gentleman's Club of honor and glory and perpetuated the idealized myth of the romance of war.

There were exceptions along the way, during the Spanish American war, the young scion of a powerful family, one Theodore Roosevelt, gave up his job as deputy secretary of the Navy and used his connections and wealth to obtain a LtCol commission in the US Volunteer Calvary. Roosevelt had a highly idealized vision of manhood and war, but his inspired leadership and personal heroism at San Juan and Kettle Hills on the island of Cuba was the stuff of epic legends, as was his honest concern for his men. When it was over, Roosevelt returned to a lifetime of public service and he never forgot those men, or they him. War shaped him and changed him and far from feeling superior, he wrote that he often felt humbled by the experience, and humbled by the courage and determination of the common men around him on the battlefield. Roosevelt spent the rest of his amazing life speaking about duty and service, and though he lived a life of adventure (he and his son nearly died in a year long expedition to the jungles of the Amazon - after his presidency), he never glorified war or romanticized military service. When he wrote his autobiography, he gave only a few bare lines to his time in the USV, and only a single paragraph to the epic battle of San Juan hill - and said almost nothing of his part in it. Roosevelt understood the myth of the romance of war, and he knew from personal experience that it was only that, a myth.

Today, in America, that time is past. Members of the military, both officer and enlisted, are professionals. They join for many reasons, but never for the illusion of glory. Now that the draft is thirty years behind us, the rich and powerful can no longer buy their way into or out of the military. They have to settle for getting their sons and daughters an appointment to VMI, or one of the service academies - and those kids get treated exactly the same as everybody else, and they have to start at the bottom.

America has moved on.

Most of it, anyway.

Among the rich and powerful, the myth of the romance of war still lingers.

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said, in response to complains from troops in Afghanistan. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed... It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history..."

We began the last century with a president who was a true hero, in every sense of the word. An admirable man of courage, vision, and honor. A man who went when called by his country, who personally led his men into battle and who truly understood war in all of its horrifying reality.

We began this century with George W. Bush.

Some things change, but many stay exactly the same.

Jerkoff of the Week - Paul Broun

You know what chaps my ass?

Well, yeah, a lot of things actually.

But today it's certain Conservative members of Congress who seem to think the Second Coming would be facilitated if only all the rest of us baby killing, illegal immigrant smuggling, gay loving, family value haytin', Jeebus rejecting, Constitution thumping, science believing, bunny squeezin', immoral, unethical, liberal leaning, non-English speaking offspring of the devil would just jolly well fuck right off to Canada.

Meet Paul Broun, US Congressional Representative from Georgia's 10th District. Former Marine, Navy Medical Officer, doctor, and epitome of everything I detest about the current batch of jackasses who hijacked the GOP when the rest of us weren't looking.

A couple of quotes from from his website:

As a young man, I had a strong desire to serve in the military. The day that I became a U.S. Marine was one of the proudest days of my life. Later, I also served as a Navy medical officer. As a Marine, I took an oath to defend the United States. Keeping that oath is a sacred obligation (Note: Apparently, he didn't take the same oath when he became a Naval officer). This particular statement says a lot about Broun and his selective use of facts and his perception of history. See, as a Marine and as a Naval Officer, his job was to defend the United States - but his oath was to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Notice how that little distinction seems to have slipped his mind?

I work overtime in Congress to make sure that we honor our covenant with those who have served in the Armed Forces. As your Congressman, I work to make sure that veterans and their families receive every benefit that has been promised. Strangely, however, a check of the congressional record shows that he has almost no voting record regarding any bill before the house involving the military or veterans or their families - well other than to vote 'no' on mortgage relief, 'yes' on continuing the war ad infinitum, and 'yes' towards requiring a permanent law diverting a minimum of 4% of GDP to defense. As to working overtime, well, the record shows he's big on voting for early adjournment of the meetings.

...I pledged that the very first legislation that I would author and introduce would define life as beginning at fertilization. I kept that pledge with HR 4157, The Sanctity of Human Life Act. He did introduce HR4157, the bill is in the House Judiciary committee at the moment. This also an insight into the mind of Broun, he intends to legislate the definition of human life. Once he's got that defined as at conception, ... well you can figure out the rest for yourself.

All of our rights come from God, not from government. Our Founding Fathers understood this. They understood that the role of government, is to recognize and preserve our God-given, inalienable rights. Therefore, they wrote the Second Amendment. Uh? I'm not even going to touch this one.

America was founded upon the Christian principles contained in the Word of God. We must stop radical judges from legislating from the bench, destroying revered American religious traditions and religious symbols. Getting some insight into Mr. Brown yet? And apparently the fact that in addition to Christian texts, Jefferson and the framers of the Constitution also referred to the Koran and a vast number of secular works is something that Broun just completely missed.

And my personal favorite: Behind every good man is a strong woman. Ah ha, ah hahaha! Ha! That's right, bitch, God says get your barefooted ass behind me. (Question: does this mean behind every bad man there's a weak woman? Bitches, been causin' problems for men since those shenanigans in the garden with that apple).

Broun is one of those people who thinks that everybody should share his vision of white English speaking conservative Christian America - you know the neat little Southern town where the doctors make house calls, men toil in righteous defense of the country, housewives trade recipes over white picket fences and have dinner on the table when their weary husbands come home. There's a Baptist church on every corner and all the funny looking people either live in California or sing hymns contentedly while picking the fucking cotton.

Now normally I'd just ignore this idiot, the world is full of them, but Broun is also one of those people who, when they can't bend America as a whole to their version of morality and good Christian White People Ethics, looks around for a captive population to force into their pinched little worldview.

And true to form, he's settled on the military.

"Allowing the sale of pornography on military bases has harmed military men and women by: escalating the number of violent, sexual crimes; feeding a base addiction; eroding the family as the primary building block of society; and denigrating the moral standing of our troops both here and abroad," so says Representative Broun. He has therefore introduced legislation that would close a loophole in the current law that allows the sale of some sexually explicit material on military bases by lowering the threshold required to deem material "sexually explicit."

Now before anybody gets spun up over where I'm going with this and my apparent defense of pornography, let me say personally, Meh, I don't much care. It's out there, it's always been out there, and it's always going to be out there. Romans painted porn on their walls 2500 years ago, I've seen it on a wall in a Pompeii villa - and it was porn, not art, believe me. Asian cultures have a long, long tradition of pornographic media. So have Americans, it's been around since before George Eastman and his band of chemists came up with self-developing film. And with the advent of the Internet and digital photography - well, let's just say that porn is here to stay. I personally don't have much use for it, and I do my best to protect my kid from it. I think that we need to make dammed sure those engaged in it's making are there of their own free will and are of legal age. And I think we need to hunt down and prosecute those who engage in the creation of illicit material such as kiddie porn. But, if you're an adult and you want to look at legally produced pictures of air-brushed, botoxed, silicone injected Barbie and Ken dolls frolicking around the Playboy mansion, be my guest. If you subscribe to the 900-series channels from your local cable provider, fine by me (though I really wish GCI would sanitize the titles of those channels on their menu - I really would rather not have my eleven year old son see Big Butt College Girls Take IT in the Pooper when he's flipping through the menu looking for The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, I don't subscribe and I wish it wouldn't appear on my menu. Just Saying).

Back to Broun. Now see, the bill he's introduced would classify not only magazines with pictures of nekkid people as pornography, but anything Broun considers racy. Magazines like, oh, Maxim and FHM. I've read a few Maxims out there at sea, and while I consider the content a bit puerile, I really can't see how they are pornography. Sure, there's 'sex tips' for men in each issue, that's true. Ever read the cover of a Cosmo, or Women's Health while standing in line at the Commissary or Base Exchange? But I guess if it's 10 tips for 'Satisfying Your Man' it's not porn as far as Broun is concerned (and now you know why Broun likes a good woman behind him, eh heh heh).

And as far as Penthouse and Playboy are concerned. Please. There are Gap advertisements in the Christian Science Monitor that are more provocative. Seriously, carry this far enough and Broun and his idiot supporters will have every DVD rated higher than PG-13 removed from the exchanges too. How far does this go? Are we going ban tobacco sales and alcohol? Thong underwear? Makeup (If I remember correctly, in biblical times only whores wore lipstick - as an advertisement of their particular specialty). Really, where does this end?

Here's an idea, let's say that if you are old enough to swear your oath, put on a uniform, and be deployed to Green Zone for 18 months we'll just assume that you're an adult and therefore have the same rights and access to public media as every other citizen in the United States. And while we're at it, let's also say that if a member of the US Government says in public: "...the sale of pornography on military bases has harmed military men and women by escalating the number of violent, sexual crimes; feeding a base addiction; eroding the family as the primary building block of society; and denigrating the moral standing of our troops both here and abroad, he'll have to prove it. Conclusively prove - using independently verified data compiled using solid statistical science and validated data collection methods - that members of the military have been harmed, that the sale of Maxim and FHM have directly caused the escalation of violent sexual crimes, that members of the military are suffering from a 'base addiction,' and that the families as a fundamental unit of society at large have been demonstratively 'eroded.' And I'd like a specific set of metrics that precisely define 'harmed,' 'base addiction,' and 'eroded' in the context of the statement. Thanks.

As to denigrating the moral standing of our troops, well, I'm not sure I understand exactly what that means. Seriously, in all candor, we kill people for a living. If we're not killing people, we're training to kill people. We train to kill other people by stabbing, shooting, bludgeoning, fire and blast and by choking the life out of them with our bare hands. We blow shit up, whole countries sometimes. If we're not blowing shit up, we're training to blow shit up. We sit in holes in the ground or in the water, on top of weapons of unimaginable power, prepared to vaporize ten billion people and lay waste to entire continents. That's war, and that's what we do and what we are trained for. Every day we slog through ruined cities and burned out buildings, we step over corpses of dead women and bloated children and brush futilely at the flies and the stink of putrefaction rotting in the jungle damp or the desert sun. We're not the Boy Scouts or the Peace Corps. We drink and swear and smoke and sometimes look at dirty pictures and you wouldn't want us around your dinner parties. We raise hell and live our lives, because tomorrow we're going back out into the meat grinder again, and some of us aren't coming home. Is that moral? Would the people we're killing respect us more if we hadn't read a copy of Penthouse last night? I don't know and I don't much care, but it's a fact and a reality and either you find rough and tough shitkickers to defend you, or you better starting teaching your kids the enemy's language and customs.

Frankly, I'm more than a little leery of accepting a Congressmen's definition of morality here. Really, Broun is a good smug self-righteous Christian, he really ought to read that bit in the bible about the mote, eyes, and the beam and then take a good look around Capital Hill at his fellow Republicans. I'd suggest he start with Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Dennis Hastert, and well, he could probably just pick republicans at random. He's worried about morals in America? He might start with his friends.

Truly, Paul Broun, you are indeed a complete jerkoff.

(Final Note: from examination of my statistics page, I find that 99% of Google and Yahoo search engine hits for the word 'jerkoff' contain additional terms which indicate the searches are for gay porn. The fact that Representative Paul Broun will now appear in those searches as a result of this post gives me more than a touch of evil glee. Thank you, and good night).

What the Hell?

Went to Anchorage, just got back.

Somewhere in the four hours I was gone, a "rating" gadget appeared on the bottom of my blog posts. I didn't add that. Blogger is adding options automatically.

Hmmm, I don't know how I feel about that.

I really don't give a crap about ratings, farks, and etc. I write what I write because that's what I feel like writing right at that particular moment, all right? If people like it, fine. If they don't like it, fine. Ratings? Meh.

I'll leave it alone for a while and see what happens.

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Update: aaaand the rating gadget has now disappeared. Just a little midweek randomness, I guess. Bye bye rating gadget, we barely knew ye.

Genes and Discrimination

Congress sent President Bush a bill Thursday forbidding employers and insurance companies from using genetic tests showing people are at risk of developing cancer, heart disease or other ailments to reject their job applications, promotions or health care coverage, or in setting premiums.

The Senate passed the bill unanimously, 95-0, and the House passed the bill 414-1, with the only dissenting vote by Ron Paul, R-TX.

Cool, right?

Don't get me wrong I'm all about non-discrimination and I think this is a good thing. But, I have a couple of observations here:

1) Does this mean that we're finally going to stop gouging the parents of teenaged male drivers? I mean, it seems to me that the supposedly statistically higher risk of boys being predisposed to more reckless behavior behind the wheel than girls is based pretty much on genetics.  So, does this bill, should it become law, mean that insurance companies will no longer be able to legally use statistical bullshit and stereotyping to penalize males drivers - since their maleness is derived entirely from their genetic makeup?  Hmmm, how much you want to bet there's a loophole?

2)  I find it interesting that Congress can vote overwhelmingly to end discrimination based on genetics, but can't seem to muster the wherewithal to end the widespread discrimination against gay marriage, non-Christians, and etc.  Just so I'm clear on this, it's OK to discriminate against gays in something as important and personal as a long term stable partnership and all that entails, but it's not OK to discriminate against somebody who might be genetically predisposed to certain disorders?  I guess the bible doesn't have anything to say about the Human Genome Project.

I could go on here, but I won't.  I'm busy today and have to leave for Anchorage in a couple of minutes.

Again, I think this is a good law, I just don't think it goes nearly far enough. How about a law that says discrimination, based on race, creed, color, religion or lack thereof, sex, sexual orientation, statistics, or any other damn fool thing is illegal and contrary to the ideals of the Constitution and the founding principles of the United States?

Probably too much to expect.

What the Internet needs

A search engine where you can hum a few bars into your computer's microphone and it'll figure out the name of that dammed instrumental song that's been trapped in your brain for the last four friggin' hours going round and round like a coked-up hamster on a squeaky exercise wheel. And the search engine should be able to figure it out no matter how tone deaf you are or badly you can't carry a tune. The nerd wizard engineers at Google want to impress me, they'd come up with that.

Is it just me?

Laura Bush on TV condemning Myanmar's military dictatorship for not allowing US hurricane relief: "We know already that they are very inept," she said. Yeah, thanks for the piercing insight, Laura. Though, to be fair, she may have been talking about Texas cheer-leading or the Lady Rotarian Bake Sale.

Several things struck me here:

1) The invisible First Lady: Really, who the hell is Laura Bush? It's been eight years now and frankly other than a couple of publicity photos of her wan, powdered, blow-dried ass reading a book to a couple of third graders or a quick clip of her pants suited backside on the way to Marine One clinging in true subservient fashion to her husband's sleeve like a good little republican housefrau , what have we seen of this woman? And now she's an expert on Myanmar's political situation, disaster relief, and foreign policy? Color me a little skeptical on this one, but then again how much worse than our current State Department could she be?

2) The naming of things: She kept referring to Myanmar as Burma, as does the rest of the Bush Administration. Burma. What's next? Maybe she'll give us an update on human rights abuses in Peking. Or the revolution in Ceylon. Of course, what do you expect from a White House that keeps building 2 billion dollar Spirit bombers, 120 million dollar F-22 Raptors, and 3 billion dollar CX Cruisers to fight the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics? When you've got those kind of toys, I guess you can't afford to reprint the maps.

3) Pot, Kettle, and Blackness: 22,500 dead by the latest count this morning. Don't these people have enough problems already without adding FEMA to the mix? Seriously, can anybody blame Myanmar's Junta for being reluctant to accept 'aid' from the same folks who brought us the Katrina response? What's the plan here? Send them Ray Nagin, Kathleen Blanco and some New Orleans PD to restore order and get the whore houses and bars up and running again? Or are we going to ship over a couple boatloads of FEMA trailers and some Haliburton contracts?


Understand, I have no love, respect, admiration, pity, or support for the despots running Myanmar at the moment. I am appalled that they can't put aside their own power mad selfishness for a moment and take help for what's left of their desperate population. But, seriously, Laura Bush calling somebody else's response to a hurricane disaster of unprecedented proportions 'inept?'

Yeah, it's just me.

In all candor, Laura, please go back to the country club or your charity for the underprivileged children of Exxon executives and leave the citizens of Maynmar, and the rest of us, the hell alone. No, really, we've got enough problems.

Totally More Smarterer

Thanks, John





I don't know what sucked my score down by 2%, unless it was whole part where you have to solve for the Special Theory of Einstein's Relatives using nothing but sea cucumbers and an electric train, or something. Actually, I may not be remembering that question correctly.



Update:
And just because I can't resist certain types of online tests:

I think I know that Cat

Saw this, couldn't stop laughing.

 

Busy this morning, replacing the valve cover gaskets on my wife's Mustang and finishing some production work.  More later, possibly even some new bowl pictures.

A note on procedure

OK, look if you're a spokesman or a news reporter for something, then just say it please. No embellishment, no extra words - just feakin' say it.

Example:

Wrong: "... the facility appears to have sustained undetermined damage from a suspected small explosive device."
Correct: "A bomb damaged the building."

Thank you.

From the WTF File

Food Fight, "an abridged history of American-centric war, from World War II to present day, told through the foods of the countries in conflict. Watch as traditional comestibles slug it out for world domination in this chronologically re-enacted smörgåsbord of aggression."

Who's Who Cheat Sheet here.



Ummm, yeah.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm hungry. I think I'll go have breakfast. I'm thinking a couple of pacifist boiled eggs and some conscientious objector hash-browns - I'm not big on fighting with my food. The coffee has already surrendered - it's a french roast.

Argh! Too. Much. Stupid.

I just walked from the shop.

I left the TV on. I really need to stop doing that.


Glenn Beck interviewing Ben Stein on CNN.


It was like staring into the depths of a galactic-mass black hole of teh stupids, from somewhere near the Schartzchild radius. The only thing that could possibly have made it worse would be if they were broadcasting from The Creation Museum.

I couldn't listen. No, not even for snarky blogging material. I turned it off. And now I must go pour bleach in my eyes. Excuse me.

Curious George Goes to Washington

The Oval Office:

GWB: Gosh darn it! (Shakes the newspaper, sticks out bottom lip)

Dick: What is it, George? (not looking up)

GWB: I told you, I want to be called The Decider! (sticks lip out further)

Dick: Riiiight. What's up? Hillary still in the race? (glancing up) And don't pout like that, it makes you look like a monkey, little Curious George.

GWB: Curious George! I love those books. Did you ever read the one where George goes up into space? That was sooo cool! And he got a medal! (purses his lips to make a monkey face, makes circles with his thumbs and forefingers, then puts them over his eyes like a pair of simian space goggles). How about the one where George tries to do the laundry and the whole house is filled up with soap suds?! (giggles)

Dick: Uh, no.

GWB: You never read Curious George? The words are really easy and there are lots of pictures!

Dick: No, I was more of a Guns & Ammo kid. Anyway, what's the problem?

GWB: Kid? No, I read them now. They're inspirationalating. I like the man in the yellow hat. He's so smart and good at fixing problems, I wonder if he's available? He could help me the way he helps Curious George.

Dick: (sighs, puts down the TOP SECRET folder he's holding, reaches behind his chair and pulls out a large yellow pith helmet, puts it on) Look here, George. It's time I told you a secret. I'm really the man in the yellow hat. You're really Curious George. I found you in Maine, when you were a baby, and brought you home to Texas. Those books are about us.

Curious George: No way!

Dick in the yellow hat: Way.

Curious George: I knew it. I did!

Dick in the yellow hat: Yeah, wow. Look it's a secret so you can't tell anybody. Now, what's the problem? Tell me, and I'll fix it.

Curious George: Nobody likes me! See? (he throws the paper across the office. It lands at Dick's feet. It's USA today. On the front page is a picture)

Dick in the yellow hat: Oh, that. (frowns disapprovingly) Look here, George, I've told you about this before. You need to work on remembering things I teach you. Newspapers sometimes make mistakes.

Curious George: They do?

Dick in the yellow hat: Yes, just like you.

Curious George: But not you?

Dick in the yellow hat: No, of course not. Now, in this case they've obviously printed the graph upside down. See? (turns the paper over and holds it up for Curious George to see). That's so people in China will see it correctly and know how popular you are! Then they won't fuck with us.

Curious George: Ooooh!

Dick in the yellow hat: There's a good little fellow. See you're quite the popular President.

Curious George: I am! I am! (claps hands together)

Dick in the yellow hat: Good, glad we cleared that up (glances towards the folder of 'Interrogation' porn fresh from Gitmo) The man in the yellow hat needs a little quiet time with his pith helmet, George. Why don't you scamper off and play with supreme court appointments or stem cell policy for a while?

Curious George: (still looking at the graph), Uh, how come the numbers are all upside down?

Dick in the yellow hat: (sighs) Look, George, how many times do we have to go over this. You have a funny disease called dyslexia. It's because you have a little monkey brain and sometimes it mixes things up.

Curious George: Oh yeah. I rememberate now.

Dick in the yellow hat: See, this is just like the time you got all upset over the economy. You thought is was going backwards, but...

Curious George: It was really going forward! Just like when I thought people told me there were no weapons of mass demonstrations in Iraqiland! But there are some there, right? Lot's of them! (claps his hands)

Dick in the yellow hat: Right, exactly. See sometimes you get things backwards, or upside down. It's because you did cocaine and jello shooters when you were little. And that's why you have to listen to me and don't make any decisions or speeches without my approval.

Curious George: OK, I'll try to rememberate. Just so I'm clear on this - people really like me?

Dick in the yellow hat: You're as popular as President Truman.

Curious George: Wow! Truman got to vaporate funny looking people. Do you think I'll get to nukeelarate something? I think that would make me really popular, people like fireworks! How about Irania?

Dick in the yellow hat: Hey! Quit fiddling with that. I've told you before, nobody pushes the big red button unless I say so.

But is was too late, George being a curious little monkey had pushed the big red button!

Curious George: Uh Oh! (scampers under his desk)

Next: Curious George and the endless Nukelear Winter!

Jerkoff of the Week - A Failure of Leadership

The Secretary of the Army said Wednesday the Barracks Video of Korean War-era barracks at Fort Bragg is unacceptable.

Unacceptable? Personally, I think unacceptable is the understatement of the century.

Surprised? Personally, I'm not surprised in the least.

Over the two decades I spent in the military, I've spent a lot of time in barracks all over the world. Most were fairly decent, but a few such as the Transient Barracks at a Naval Air Station in Maine - with broken toilets and dirty sheets and human blood smeared on the walls of the shower - were every bit as bad as the conditions at Fort Bragg.

The recent press coverage of the barracks at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington DC were just as bad - with the added bonus of rats.

The conditions in the Infantry Barracks at Fort Bragg are far more than merely unacceptable, they are disgusting, revolting, and dishonorable in the extreme. The deplorable living conditions do far more than simply embarrass the Army, they speak directly and pointedly of a chronic, endemic, and pervasive failure of leadership across the board over a long, long period of time. Decades in fact.

Whose responsibility is this?

Well, a lot of folks actually - but ultimately what we're looking at here is an utter, abject failure of leadership at at all levels of the chain of command, from the Non Commission Officer to the Commander in Chief.

It's the NCO fault: No real NCO would have allowed his men to move into this shithole. Period. He'd have pitched tents on the parade ground, dug latrines in the Commanding General's front yard, and had his men raze those crackhouse quarters to the ground. A real NCO should have gathered his fellow Sergeants and taken the Company Commander, by force if necessary, through that cesspool in nitpicking detail. A real NCO would have taken a squad and kicked in the door of the base Supply Office, gotten the material necessary, organized his men and made those barracks livable - or found quarters that were up to proper standards and moved his men in there, even if they happened to be Senior Enlisted or Officer quarters. Fuck the regulations, a real NCO would have made it happen. I can not imagine a Navy Chief who would have tolerated this situation. When I was a senior NCO I would have inspected those barracks prior to allowing a single man to move in, and if I had found the conditions, or even far less, evident in the video above I would have been in front of the Commanding Officer ten minutes later demanding proper housing for my troops. And I wouldn't have taken no for an answer. Period, end of story. I would have moved my entire team into hotels off-base and billed the fucking White House if necessary. I simply cannot fathom an NCO who does not place the welfare of his troops above his own personal career. I. Cannot. Fathom. It. But, that's the difference between an initiated Chief Petty Officer and an E7, who wears the rank and collects the paycheck and little else.

It's the Company Commander and his officers' fault: Any officer who would allow this situation is completely and totally derelict in his duty, period, and should be immediately cashiered. When I was a commissioned officer, there is no way I would have allowed my troops to move into a barracks without inspecting the facility first. And I not only expected my NCO's to raise hell, I demanded it. The NCO's failure to address the situation forcefully is a personal leadership failure on the part of the Company Commander and his officers. The officers who allowed their men to move into this shithole aren't worthy of the uniforms they wear, and you can damn well bet if they were assigned to similar quarters they'd have been raising bloody hell, I guarantee it. Every single one of these self-serving assholes should be held accountable for this situation to the full extent of the Uniform Code of Military Justice under Sub-Chapter 10, Article 892 Failure to Obey an Order or Regulation (specifically US Army regulations regarding housing standards for enlisted forces outside the combat zone), Article 983 Cruelty and Maltreatment (if 3" of raw sewage on the floor, sewage in the sinks, lead paint, and etc isn't maltreatment, I don't know what is), Article 933 Conduct Unbecoming of an Officer, and Article 934 General Article for Dereliction of Duty and conduct contrary to good order and discipline and that which brings discredit upon the Armed Forces of the United States. This needs to happen loudly and publicly as a message to every other commissioned officer that such disregard for the forces under their command will not be tolerated. Any officer who fails to take care of his troops will get shitcanned, publicly and without mercy. Troops come first, period.

It is the Fort Bragg Facility Officer's fault: This shitsucking, bottom feeding non-combatant should have made damned sure those facilities were ready for occupation and up to basic military standards. I don't care how, a real officer would have made it happen. He's responsible for the upkeep of those facilities, he is responsible by his assignment and by the oath he swore, and I will bet you anything you like that he made sure the base commanding general and the colonels all had pretty new carpet in their offices and conference rooms, and that the flower gardens in front of their on-base mansions were all kept neat and tidy. This Officer is guilty of dereliction of duty for failure to maintain those barracks to minimum military standards, which is his primary responsibility. Not only are these facilities supposed to house returning combat troops, they are the property of the tax paying citizens of the United States - and if they are not condemned and scheduled for destruction, they are to be maintained as property of the United States by law and regulation. This Officer needs to be made an example of, immediately and forcefully.

It is the Commanding Officer's fault: Commanding Officers are required by law and regulation for the forces, facilities, and materials under their command. They are personally responsible. They are personably and absolutely accountable for the actions of their forces, material condition of their command, and every penny spent on their watch. All Commanding Officers are required, again by law and regulation, to periodically inspect every inch of their command. In a Navy facility, actual implementation of this responsibility is often delegated to the Executive Officer. When I was assigned to USS Valley Forge, the XO used to inspect the entire ship daily and by God if your divisional areas weren't up to standards, you could damned well expect to be standing tall in the XO's stateroom directly. Once a week every Officer and Chief (the senior NCO's) were assigned Zone Inspection duties, given a list of standards, lectured at length by the XO as to what, exactly, he expected, and sent to examine every single nook and cranny of the Command. If you returned for the debriefing without finding any 'hits,' it was very likely that the XO would accompany you on a reinspection immediately following the briefing - and if he found something that you missed, your ass would be in the ringer. Good Navy XO's are widely feared and respected, and for good reason - they are the ramrod and directly responsible to the CO for the material condition of the facility or vessel. The conditions at Fort Bragg clearly and unequivocally indicate a failure of leadership and responsibility at the highest levels. There is no excuse whatsoever for the condition of those barracks. None. Not money, manpower, time, or any other dammed excuse. It's obvious that the CO and XO never inspected those facilities in accordance with regulation and their personal responsibilities. The Commanding Officer is indisputably derelict in his duties and should face a Court Martial immediately - and the XO with him.

It is the Regional Commander's fault: Just as with the Commanding Officer, the Regional Commander, a General, is responsible by law for the forces, facilities, materials, and funds under his command. He is required to conduct unannounced surprise inspections and it's obvious that in this case the general spent more time inspecting the golf course and the Officer's Club than the housing facilities of his troops.

It is the General of the Army's fault: Conditions at Fort Bragg are not an isolated incident, they are nearly exactly the same as the Transient Barracks identified and hushed up at Walter Reed. I've done a hell of a lot of inspections in my time and I will bet you, again anything you like, that I can find similar conditions on bases across the country. It is the General of the Army's fault, because instead of conducting an immediate and thorough inspection of every living facility under his command in order to ascertain ground truth after the conditions at Walter Reed came to light, he decided it was an 'isolated incident' and didn't bother to look any further. He should have ordered an immediate and complete inspection of every facility under his command, to be conducted personally by regional commanders and each individual commanding officer. He didn't. And he didn't because he knew what he'd find - and he didn't want to deal with it. Instead he let his forces stew in sewage. If he had one shred of honor, he'd take off that fucking gold ring and resign his commission.

It is the civilian leadership's fault: The Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of Defense, Congress, and the President himself. For twenty years I've watched these pompous windbags come and go, from Reagan to Bush the Decider and their associated ass-kissing toadies. They're all the same, full of wind, shit, and excitement. They breeze onto base with their entourage, go where the CO points them, shake a few hands, make a long and boring speech full of praise for the heroic troops, smile for the cameras, have lunch at the Officer's Club and blow out of town, never to be seen again. Not once, in my experience, has any one of them said - "Hey! I'm going to take a look around, let's start over there with that barracks." Fuck them and the limo they rode in on.

Generals, Admirals, Secretaries, Congressmen, and Presidents will wax self-righteous, thump their manly chests, and speak of the heroic troops. They will gush endlessly poetic over how troops come first - and they will always, inevitably, and relentlessly divert funds and energy into golf courses, new carpet, decorative planters, flower beds, and big mahogany desks. They'll spend millions on a static display of a tank or a landing craft or a fighter jet on a stick in a flower bed in the middle of the base. They'll spend millions on hydraulic pop up barriers and super-duper electronic security countermeasures at the front gate, when a couple of cheap concrete barricades would do the exact same job. They'll spend millions on electronic vap boards and video teleconferencing equipment for their conference rooms, and shiny flat panel monitors, and the latest version of Microsoft Office Enterprise for every computer in the military and yet use, oh, about a hundredth of it's capability. They'll spend money to make sure every Staff Officer has a personalized parking spot in front of the shiny new HQ. They'll spend billions building new F-22 stealth Raptors, that have no conceivable purpose in the post-cold war world, and billions more for new hangers to put them in - because God forbid those new airplanes should have to be housed in perfectly good facilities we built for the last bunch of new airplanes. They'll spend millions on airshows and parades and speeches and photo-ops and press conferences and yellow fucking ribbons. But they won't spend money for paint, or working plumbing, or drinking fountains, or clean sheets, or... well, you get the idea. Actions always speak louder than words. It's one thing to claim people are our number one asset, that we respect the troops who keep us safe, that we honor their service and admire them for their sacrifice - it's a wholly different thing to live up to those words.

This failure is not an isolated incident, it's another sign of a deeper rot - the same putrescent failure of leadership that got us into the current mess, the same failure of leadership that sent troops to war without armor and equipment, the same failure of leadership that brought them home to peeling lead paint and raw sewage.

And ultimately it's the fault of each and every American: If you don't vote, it's your fault. If you vote for political parties instead of people with integrity and honor and a sense of duty, it's your fault. If you allow your leaders unfettered reign without accountability, it's your fault. If you keep electing the same old bastards because you think it's funny to have a 96 year Senator in Office, it's your fault. If you can name the last ten Heismen Trophy winners or Britney's bra size, but have never read the Constitution, it's your fault. And it's long past time for Americans to stand the hell up and demand an accounting from the leadership of this country.

Will it happen?

I'm not holding my breath.

Motivation

Man, the weather has been weird this month - in other words, normal for Alaska during breakup (spring, for you southerners).

All that snow we got earlier in the week has mostly melted off, thanks to a couple of days of warmer weather. 

However, today it's rainy and damp.

Which does me no good at all, really. My bad shoulder bothered me all day yesterday, and this morning it's killing me - hopefully the pill will kick in sooner rather than later.  My bones ache and I'm a little muzzy headed, didn't sleep well for some reason. In addition to coffee, a lot of coffee, I need something to get me going.

This is an issue, since I have a lot to do in the shop and, as usual, I'm a bit behind today.  I was right on schedule until I had a bandsaw blade snap yesterday afternoon.  Usually that's not a big deal, it happens, but in this case I was cutting tight curves into thick birch pieces for contract work - which requires a special, very thin blade. Which broke in the middle of a cut.  Now, see I try to avoid single points of failure and I thought I had another one, but as it turns out - after repeated perusal of the blade storage rack accompanied by increasingly foul Navy cursing - that I didn't.  Well, hell. Normally I can simply braze (kind of a cross between welding and soldering) the blade back together, but in this case the blade jammed and twisted, which means I can't fix it and I've got to go buy a new one.  Of course this happened with about 90% of the job done. The uncut pieces are now sitting on the work cart, mocking me. Argh! 

So, anyway - motivation, I need to shake off the funk and get moving.  I've got to run into Wasilla and pick up a new blade, and a couple of other things, then I've got to reset the bandsaw and make up lost time.

Fortunately, I've got just the thing to get me moving, and I'm going to share it with you. You'll want to play it loud, like you were a teenager again:

And if that isn't enough, try this one.  Talk about your dream line up, Mark Knopfler, Phil Collins, Sting, and Eric Clapton doing Money For Nothing at the Royal Albert Hall.  This was the Music For Montserrat benefit concert following Hurricane Hugo.  I would have literally killed to be at this concert.  This is one of my all time favorite videos:

More later.

Gas - of the hot air variety

Well, gas prices hit another record high today - what's that? Something like seventeen straight days in a row now.

It's $3.75 per/gal here in Palmer, Alaska, well above the national average, but below the $4.00 per gallon in certain parts of California. And in a minute I'm going to run into town and fill up my tank and my gas cans before it goes any higher and the value of my money drops any lower.

If anybody was hoping for a solution or relief from the White House - well, you can kiss that idea good bye. I watched the President this morning - and what exactly the point of his address from the Rose Garden was I'm not sure, other than to tell us to take high energy costs and go fuck jolly well off. He made it clear that he's not going to do a damned thing until Congress lets his buddies in the Oil Industry drill in ANWR. I noticed he didn't bother to mention that even if Exxon got the green light today, it would be a minimum of five to ten years before those wells started putting significant petroleum into the pipeline, and probably more like fifteen. He also didn't mention who would pay for the feeder pipelines from the wells to the main Alyeska Pipeline at Prudhoe Bay, a couple of hundred miles, that can only be built during the two months of Arctic Summer and will take years to complete. How exactly that would lower gas prices at the pump in the near future he also did not bother to mention. He's also not interested in cutting summer gas taxes or halting the filling of the strategic reserve - despite the fact that we don't have the refinery capacity to process the oil held in the reserve and maintain enough output for civilian use.

Now, he did mention building new refineries on abandoned military bases. An interesting idea there, but he didn't mention how those refineries will reduce energy costs or who's going to pony up the billions necessary to construct them. And based on my own experience with reutilization of military installations, I figure the licensing and leasing of federal property, especially for HAZMAT operations such as a refinery, ought to take, oh, about five to seven years, minimum before construction even begins. Figure at least another five years for construction and well, it's not really George's problem is it?

The Decider did call on Congress to cut subsidies to 'multimillionaire' farmers - yet, strangely he made no mention of cutting subsidies to the oil industry, despite record profits over the last couple of years and especially in the first quarter of this year.

So, another day goes by. Congress blames the President, and the President pouts and whines and points his little finger at Congress. Both talk about leadership and neither have any idea of what the word means. If they were my children, I'd bang their heads together. I see revolution coming, I do. And not the good kind either.

What are the gas prices where you're at? And what's the general mood?

Memes and Critical Thought

In my previous profession, I was one of the military's top experts in a fairly unusual field - Information Warfare.

If you have only a vague notion of what IW might be, well, don't feel bad - you're in the majority. Even folks within the community struggle to understand just what exactly comprises the specifics of their field and there are many, many definitions, some mutually exclusive. In a nutshell though, Information Warfare is simply the codification and acknowledgement of something that has been around since man first crawled out of the primordial ooze - to wit: information is power.

In combat, those with control over the information flow win. If you can prevent the accurate and timely acquisition, processing, analysis, and distribution of information by the enemy, while preserving those things within your own force structure, you'll win. I'm not revealing any great military secret here, commanders have known this fact since, well, forever. That's why, in modern combat, it's a truism that the most dangerous soldier is the one with the radio - it's also why he tends to get shot first.

Commanders, military planners, and tacticians have always striven to control the information flow, both within their own organizations and within the enemy's, with varying degrees of success. And by control I don't necessarily mean restrict, what I mean is manage. Within an information gathering organization, such as any intelligence agency, it is imperative to not only acquire information, but to also determine it's validity - and you do that by examining each piece of data for certain criteria, such as relevance to the current and anticipated situation, it's accuracy as compared to supporting data and analysis, timeliness, level of detail, and a number of other factors. Over the millennia there have been those forces that were extremely good at this sort of thing, and many more who were not. And up until the advent of 'modern conflict' this process has been more art form and natural talent than any sort of science. However, around WWII and the beginning of modern information systems, intelligence organizations began to codify the process and found that even average people could be trained to think this way - to apply the science of critical thought to the acquisition and processing of information. And at the height of the air war in Southeast Asia, during the Vietnam conflict, a Colonel named John Boyd came up with a method of critical analysis called the OODA Loop, or more properly The Boyd Cycle. OODA, for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Loop, because done properly this is a continuously repeating process. Here's a picture of Boyd's concept:

When I designed tactics and taught warfighters how to use them, I spent an entire week on this one concept alone, because it was that critical. Those that can continuously and reliably apply this process have a significant tactical advantage over their opponents, be that opponent a single fighter aircraft or an entire army. You don't have to be particularly fast or accurate at the process, only faster and more accurate than your adversary.

When Boyd retired from the Air Force, he went into business and applied this same concept - and was highly successful, as you might imagine. Businesses that can implement and execute the principles of the OODA loop have a significant advantage over their competition. An organization that can observe and accurately analyze its environment, orient and position itself within that environment and anticipate changes and trends, make decisions based on that orientation, and then act decisively - and then observe how those decisions influence the environment and repeat the cycle - will almost inevitably succeed. Again, no great secret here, but its amazing how few organizations do this well.

Observation is the single most critical step in the OODA loop. If the acquired data is flawed, incomplete, incorrect, or outdated, then your orientation in the environment is mostly likely going to be incorrect, and thus your decisions and resulting actions. Because the process is a loop, it should be self correcting, however due to human nature and bias what often happens is that instead of self correction a decision making loop based on bad information becomes self reinforcing.

Need a big, real world example? Iraq used to have weapons of mass destruction - this data is accurate, complete, and verified. Unfortunately, by the beginning of the current conflict, it was also out of date. By failing to ask ourselves critical questions about what we thought we actually knew - then observe and reorient within the changed environment - we made poor decisions. The resulting actions of which are going to be with us for a very long time.

I see this same failure of critical thought on an individual level every day. All of us are capable of critical thought - capable of observing, orientating, deciding, and acting critically - and yet few truly do this in their personal lives. When information arrives, how many folks ask themselves: How was this information acquired? Is it complete? Is it accurate? Is it biased. Is it relevant? Is there enough detail? Do I accept it because it reinforces what I think I know, or do I reject it for the same reason? How can I verify it? How can I test it? If I can't test and verify the information, do I accept it anyway? If so, why?

Those who fail to ask themselves such questions place themselves and those who depend on them, at a significant disadvantage - they will always be at the mercy of those who can observe the universe critically, adjust their worldview appropriately, decide and act. Those who allow themselves to be manipulated through the use of information, are always at the mercy of those who control it - and now you know what Information Warfare really is, and why it is the single most powerful weapon ever fielded.

What brings this to mind for me today (not that this subject is ever very far from my thoughts), is the topic of memes talked about on the various blogs I read and Senator Barrack Obama. Or more specifically, the rather large amount of viral data, memes if you will, circulating through the information sphere that are accepted as fact, and yet are easily verified as incomplete, out of date, irrelevant, lacking in precision, or just plain false. For example: the picture, widely circulated via email, purporting to show that Obama disrespects America because he didn't place his hand on his chest during the National Anthem. Easily proved false, and yet widely accepted by otherwise intelligent folks as true. But what really got me thinking about this subject is the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Over the last several months the man has been vilified for a number of sermons he gave - or rather sound bites taken from his sermons and deliberately broadcast out of context.

For example Wright was widely quoted as saying that the U.S. had brought the September 11 attacks upon itself and "America's chickens are coming home to roost..."

People were incensed, outraged, appalled. Wright was denounced as unAmerican and unpatriotic. Because Barrack Obama attended Wright's church, he was, and is, denounced as unAmerican and unpatriotic. And yet, and yet, how many folks took that statement, out of context, as verification of their own prejudices and biases without once applying any degree of critical thought. Is this an accurate quote? Is it complete? In what context was it made? Is it relevant, relevant to me, relevant to the presidential campaign, relevant to the nation at large? Is it timely and/or is the timing suspicious? And etcetera. How many folks actually watched the sermon in it's entirety? Based on my own observations, damned few that's how many. Because if they had, they couldn't have missed that Wright was quoting the ambassador from Iraq - under Saddam's administration - as an example of how other people see America.

However, ask yourself a question here, what if he was condemning American foreign policy? What if he actually was saying that by funding and equipping Saddam Hussein during the Tanker war against Iran, or by funding and equipping the Mujahedeen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, or that by favoring and condoning Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, America had laid the ground work for the attacks of 9/11? Seriously, so what? Is this a new idea? Is the observation of such things in and of itself unpatriotic? Is it actually incorrect? Is any criticism of the United States by a US citizen grounds for national outrage? Really?

Wright has also spoken out against racism, and disfranchisement, and prejudice, and a number of things that are important, and personal, to his flock. Should he have been more polite about it? Is it his tone that's unpatriotic? Or his passion? Or is he off base; is what he's saying wrong? Is prejudice, and racism, and bias gone from America? Has poverty been stamped out? Or disenfranchisement?

Or is he saying things that we as Americans don't want to hear?

If we fail to observe critically, if we disregard information because it doesn't fit with our precious opinions of our own selves and our nation, then we will continue to orient ourselves poorly within the global and national environments, and as a result we will continue to make decisions and implement actions that place our nation and a significant fraction of our population at a significant disadvantage.

Wright hasn't said one thing publicly that isn't true, or at least reasonably correct - within the proper context. He has also said, yesterday as a matter of fact, that reconciliation means "we embrace our individual rich histories," and that it also means removing "any teaching of superiority, inferiority, hatred or prejudice" and recognizing that each person "is one of God's children ... no better, no worse." While, I'm not a religious person and am somewhat ambivalent on the subject of a Supreme Being - I can accept and embrace Wright's statement in the context given and admire him for his position.

Predictably though, those comments have not received nearly as much attention as those that reinforced popular perception. Those that want to find a reason to vote against Obama, will. Period. Even if it's not in their best interest, a significant number of Clinton democrats claim that they will either not vote, or vote for McCain, if Obama wins the Democratic nomination. In other words, they will take actions contrary to their own interests, based on poor decisions, derived from an incorrect orientation, due to a failure to observe the environment critically and without bias.

Then they'll spend the next four years bitching about how the Republicans stole yet another election - before the cycle begins again.

I'm not saying that you're an idiot if you don't vote for Obama. I'm not saying that you should vote for him, or that I will either for that matter. What I'm saying is: Observe, orient, decide, act - i.e. think! Gather data critically. Question the information. Verify your facts, for crying out loud - then make your decision. Because your observations, orientation, decisions, and actions affect me, and that makes it personal.

And stop forwarding viral email, there's enough bad data in the world without making it worse.

Ahhh, Spring in Alaska. Big Whoop Tee Friggin' Do

The last week has been gorgeous.

Beautiful, sunny, warm. All the snow is gone, finally. Tuesday and Wednesday it was 68 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit respectively. Hell, I was even glad to see the mosquitos.

Convertible weather. Woohoo.

My wife drives our Jeep Cherokee in the winter, but in the summer she drives her pride and joy - this:

That's an '88 Mustang ragtop, otherwise known as a 5.0 liter, 5-speed, fuel injected rocket sled. We found it for sale sitting in a field, next to a crappy rundown bar on the road to Patuxent River, Maryland. The paint was faded and the top rotting off. One of the tail lights was broken and the tires were basically bald balloons. But it only had 26,000 miles on it and the drive train and body were in excellent shape - so we bought it, for about half what it was worth.

New tires, custom paint job, new top (and it needs another one now), exhaust system, a tune up or two, various and etcetera - and it turns a few heads. Especially with my stunningly attractive wife behind the wheel.

But, it's not a winter car. It's just too lightweight and too powerful to drive on icy roads, especially on Alaskan icy roads. So we put it away when the snow flies. I fill the tank with fuel preserver and and park it in the unused stall of the attached garage and disconnect the battery. And there it sits, forlorn, until greener days.

So, the weather. Sunny, beautiful, and etcetera. Monday my wife called and got the insurance reactivated and I charged up the battery. Tuesday I started the car and pulled it into the shop for pre-season maintenance. It was running rough, fuel injectors were a little gunky from sitting for the last six months, so I pulled the throttlebody, fuel injector bar, manifold and injectors and gave them all a good cleaning. Then I put every thing back together yesterday and it runs great.

This morning I washed and waxed the car in the shop while Vista installed SP1. Understand, I started the SP1 installation and went out to the shop, it was sprinkling just a bit and looked like it might clear up, so I figured I'd do a little woodwork while I waited for it to stop raining - then I figured I'd take the Mustang out for a test drive.

About an hour later I opened the bay door to find this:

No, that's not cottonwood fluff - that's giant flakes of very wet snow.

Try to imagine the words I was thinking right at that very moment.

So, no test drive. I shut the bay door and went back to turning. It'll clear up, said I to myself said I.

Four hours later, it looks like this:

Now I've got to go move stuff around in the shop in order to move the Mustang back far enough so that I can pull my truck in for the night.

And once that is done, instead of tooling around in the Mustang with the top down - I'll be getting the plow back out. 'Cause it's three inches deep out there, and still falling.

Oh, and we took the studded tires off the jeep last weekend, so my wife will be coming home tonight driving 60 miles from Anchorage through blowing snow with the summer tires on.

Peachy, just peachy.

Offline (updated)

I'm going to be offline for a bit this morning.

I'm completing the Vista SP1 installation - which is going just fine, but I got side tracked yesterday and didn't finish the process. I'm also installing some new hardware and a couple of other minor details. Should have it done shortly.

Thanks, see you in a little while.

---------------------------------

Update 1: Vista SP1 installed and operating. Woohoo! Seems to work fine and the computer is much faster now. I'm not entirely sure yet, but SP1 seems to have massively improved networking and networked volume issues. Further testing is required - but if that's that case I will much happier. Take that Michelle.

Now for the new video card and some various and sundry other hardware and software maintenance issues.

More later.

Upgrade Day

As most of you know, when I purchased a new server several months back I installed Windows Vista Ultimate.

The Upgrade Part II
The Upgrade Part I

So far I've been pretty happy with it.

I haven't experienced the problems many folks have reported - probably because I know a great deal about this stuff and made damned sure that the new machine would support Vista.

After a few months of playing around with the operating system I decided that I mostly like it. I like the interface in particular a great deal, though it did take some getting used to and in some cases it's not exactly intuitive the way XP was (then again we've all had years of experience with XP, so I'm willing to be charitable in this regard).

However, I do have several beefs with Vista:

1) Indexing Process: Indexing pisses me off. I appreciate the concept of indexing, and considering the shear volume of information stored on my machines, some of it dating back nearly twenty years, I really want to be able to find and access information when I need it. However, I don't like the way indexing is handled in Vista, even though Microsoft has improved the process over its previous operating systems. I demand better control over the indexing process. For example, I don't want Vista to decide when it will index the system, I want to specify an exact time (like, say, 2:00 AM, when I'm sleeping and the machine is sitting idle).

2) Idle and hidden processes: Look, it's my machine. I bought it and I paid for it. It's mine. And I Goddamn well want to know what it's doing - and it's doing way too much stuff without telling me. I want a better, integrated process analyzer. Nothing pisses me off more than the idiotic process viewer currently included in Vista, which is basically the same uninformative piece of crap from XP. I want each process spelled out in detail, I want to know what program it's part of and I want to know why it's sucking resources from my machine at any given moment. I want to know exactly what each process is doing and why. I want to know the total amount of resources the process uses over a given period of time, i.e. a process histogram, so I can decide if I want to keep that program active on my machine. What I want are the process management tools I had fifteen years ago with DEC/VAX and MPS/X systems. And yes I know I can download programs to do this, at least to some extent. If I was sufficiently motivated I could code up a C++ or Visual Basic program myself to do it. I don't want to do either, I think Vista Ultimate should come with an integrated utility and a suite of process management tools, real ones - it's the Operating System, damnit, that's what it's supposed to do.

3) Networked Volumes: Vista has this annoying habit of querying attached storage volumes on a semi-random basis, and this more than anything else just chaps my ass. I'm running Vista on a high end Quad Core Duo machine, that's four processors, four gigs of RAM, and some serious bus throughput. I have four internal 500GB SATA drives installed and one external drive connected via firewire. Additionally, I have mapped a number of drives on the office machines upstairs via the network - because I use those drives for backup and specialized data storage (Yeah, like I said above, I have a lot of data). Every once in a while, Vista will decide that it just has to go check the status of those volumes - and when it does, the process sucks 100% of system resources for about 30 seconds. Additionally, Vista will do this every single time I click on the 'Save As' or 'Open' functions in any program. I cannot begin to tell you how much this sudden and random pause irritates me. I want this to go away, or I want to be able to specify my working volumes and have Vista check only those in real time - and leave the other ones alone unless I specifically request a status check.

4) Drivers: the driver library for Vista is growing, but it's still limited. I have a number of older peripherals that I use upon occasion and when I need them, I need them. However, I don't need them so much that I'm going to run out and buy the latest hardware every time Microsoft updates their OS. I want to be able to use my Pinnacle Systems A/D digitizer box - no driver, and the old XP ones are incompatible. I want to be able to use my big flatbed HP scanner and it's attached film negative feeder. The old XP driver will work, sort of. But half the front panel functions are unsupported. I want to be able to use my Western Digital external firewire drive, and I can - but only as a storage volume, the front panel manual backup controls and the integrated USB port are unsupported. Is this Microsoft's fault? Yes. There's no reason why the older drivers shouldn't work - even if in XP compatibility mode, Vista wasn't that big of upgrade.

Anyway, long story short, I'm in the queue for Vista SP1 today. I've put off downloading it until the inevitable bugs have been worked out. It won't address either the indexing or process viewer issues I have, but supposedly it will fix the networked volume and at least some of the driver issues, along with a host of other things that are mostly invisible to me. So, I'll be offline for a while, downloading and installing SP1. I let you know how it goes.

Liberals are miserable bastards.

Big "L," small "l," it doesn't matter, liberals, whatever their stripe are an unhappy lot. Conservatives on the other hand, are generally happy, well adjusted people.

Liberals are by definition socialists. They want the government to provide everything, and yet perversely they detest that very government and resent it's "interference" in their lives. Lefties as a group eschew hard work and do as little of it as possible - and thus deny themselves the satisfaction that comes from a job well done. See, liberals are generally lazy and because they work as little as possible they have a lot of time on their soft hands, time to think about all their ills and everything that's wrong in their lives. They dwell on it. And because liberals are generally a godless bunch, and thus have no higher power from which to draw strength, they have no direction in their pitiful lives. As a result liberals seek out causes. Liberals always have a cause, they're always out saving the whales, or aborting babies, or screaming about climate change or chaining themselves to trees and nuclear power plants. Liberals just can't seem to live and let live. And as a result of these things they are unhappy and dissatisfied and miserable.

Conservatives are different. First and foremost conservatives are proactive. They're problem solvers. Conservatives know that work is the key to true happiness. They love to work, and the harder the work the better. Putting food on the table, providing for their families, paying the bills - those are the things that give true satisfaction and bring real happiness. Conservatives don't expect the government to provide; conservatives make their own way in the world and are happier for it. Conservatives don't resent government in their lives, because they know that strong government provides for security and stability. And ultimately conservatives have God on their side. Their faith is a source of strength and happiness and purpose. Conservatives know that things will work themselves out and they don't worry about it, secure in the fact that they are God's chosen ones and that the world's problems can be solved with a suitable application of military force.

How do I know these things are true?

Easy, CNN's Glenn Beck told me so.

Had you going there for a moment, didn't I?

Now, just for the record I don't make a habit of watching Rush Junior, eh, uh, sorry Glenn Beck. But I do watch CNN Headline News in the morning before I take my kid to school. I do this because I am a creature of habit - and I'm stuck with a habit leftover from when CNN was actually a news channel, from before they became the gum snapping, tractor pulling, fluffy puff pastry American Idol station. Yesterday, I left the tube on when I left to take the kid to school, and I when I got back I went directly to the shop and never went back into the house. I came in around 1400 to check my email and Glenn Beck was on. Now normally I'd just hit the mute button and move on, but Beck was "interviewing" some constipated looking twit on the subject of Arthur Brooks' new book Gross National Happiness - it might actually have been Brooks himself, I didn't catch the introduction.

I put "interviewing" in quotes in the previous sentence because Beck was doing what he usually does, i.e. rant and scowl and grin and bob and talk about himself and use the interviewer only as confirmation of his own squalid opinions. And he was basically spewing the nonsense that I said in the first two paragraphs of this post. The difference being that I had my tongue firmly in my cheek, Beck meant every word.

Now, Glenn Beck has never had an original thought in his entire life. He fastens lamprey-like onto whatever topic will generate the most hate mail and happily cashes the checks. He claimed that "lefties" are a miserable group of people. He stated, on the other hand, that as a conservative he is happy and satisfied and that most conservatives are the same. I thought this was a fairly funny statement, coming as it did from a guy who's conservative mother committed suicide, who's conservative brother committed suicide, who spent a significant part of his life addicted to drugs and Jack Daniels and who's wife left him because he was such a miserable asshole. Frankly, I watched this sorry blowhard for an hour yesterday and if he's an example of conservative happiness, I'll take a pass.

But it got me thinking. And a little looking about confirmed that Beck is just, as usual, parroting the right-wing viewpoint. There seems to be this widespread idea amongst conservatives, neatly summarized in Gross National Happiness and supported by a 'scientific' report in the Economist, that liberals in general are miserable, unhappy people - or at least more unhappy than conservatives anyway. Take a look in the comments section of any conservative blog and you'll see this "fact" stated over and over.

As usual in these cases, and being neither self-identified as liberal nor conservative, I have a somewhat different opinion. Most of the liberals I know are reasonably happy folks, so are most of the conservatives I know - and I know a lot of people.

It's the extremists on the far sides of both camps that seem to be miserable. Take the extreme left for example, two weeks of sitting chained to a tree branch in the pouring rain outside of Seattle in order to protect the Snowy Snail Darting Yellow Breasted Sap Sucking Spotted Owl Vulture tends to make your organic hemp underwear and birkenstocks chafe, man. That would make anybody crabby. Then there's the extreme right: a good God fearing republican ought to be able to cruise the airport restrooms for a little wide stance relief or shoot a few Planned Parenthood doctors without all the hoopla from the liberal press. All that yabbering about rights and the Constitution, that would piss anybody off.

Seriously, a lot of you folks are liberals, both big and small "L" and a number of you are conservatives - are you happy? And do you think your happiness is related to your politics?

Now, if you'll excuse me I'll be out in the shop, because sawdust, it makes me happy.

Something special from the Lathe

I get mail.

Sometimes it's angry or bizarre email - and sometimes it's a box.

A couple of days ago I got a package slip in my mail box. See, we've got Alaskan rural mail service - which means that up until a couple of years ago we had to go into Palmer to get our mail, dodging moose and bears and giant mosquitos and whatnot the whole way. Inconvenient to say the least. Two years ago, a bunch of us chipped in and bought one of those big metal birdhouse looking community mail boxes and had it installed. So, now the contract slackers who deliver our mail will put envelopes and magazines and such in our box, but they do not deliver packages. For that we've got to go into town, and stand in line. And you know how I feel about that.

I wasn't expecting a package - so it was a day or two before I got around to it. After the usual twenty minute wait in line, I got my package. It was a box - a heavy box. Something inside rolled oddly, frankly it felt exactly like a bowling ball in a box - or a head. The postal robot looked at me suspiciously as he handed it over. Screw him, I smiled my best "Ahmed the Jackal" you'll be sorry smile, and left him wondering.

Now, what the hell was it?

Ah, the return address explained it - South Carolina, my cousin Dona. Inside the box was this:

Yep, that's a log.

Well, a burl actually. As near as I can tell it's a chunk of American Hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana or possibly virginiana), usually called ironwood or hophornbeam, a common tree in the Carolinas. The wood is dense and heavy and very fragrant.

Well, hell, how about that? It was still green - and I had most of my production work done, so I decided that I was going to take a couple of hours and turn this unexpected bounty.

The first step was to bore a hole in what would become the top, in order to mount the lathe chuck. This is done in two steps. First I use a large forstner bit in the drill press to bore a well. Followed by a wing cutter which scribes a 5 inch circle around the well to a depth of about an inch.

Then the waste between the well and the kerf scribed by the wing cutter has to be removed with chisel and mallet in order to make a solid well for the chuck (that silver cylinder jobber in the upper left of the picture).

Here's the chuck mounted in the blank. In this picture you can see the jaws expanded to hold this very heavy piece of wood securely. Trust me, you really don't want something like this coming loose when it's spinning at 800rpm.

Next it gets trimmed on the bandsaw into a roughly cylindrical shape and mounted on the lathe...

...using gouges and scrapers I carefully begin to shape the wood.

You can see that it's going to be a very interesting piece.

A little more shaping and then I cut a mortise in the bottom, so that I can reverse the bowl on the chuck. Not many turners use this particular technique, they prefer the bottom of the piece to be smooth. Me, I like the well in the bottom, it gives me a place to sign my name, and I think it adds an interesting feature. That orange line you see in the picture is where I'll make the mortising cut.

Once the base mortise is cut, I reverse the piece on the chuck and begin the hollowing process. Up until this point I only have a vague notion of what the final shape will be. I want to leave some of the spectacular natural edging and show off the grain. I let the wood guide the final design.

Once I see the incredible figure and burl grain, I decide to make a natural-edged flared top hollowform.

This is a difficult shape to pull off, and not for beginners.

The final shape begins to emerge from the burl...

And after four hours of very careful work, this is what I ended up with:

It's about 7" in diameter, and about 5" tall. It's incredibly heavy. I finished it in simple Tung oil.

Thanks, Dona.

Send more. A lot more.

Futility

USS Simpson, FFG-56, just returned to her homeport of Naval Station Mayport (Florida) after six months in the Southern Pacific chasing drug runners.

Oh, yeah, I remember that duty.

It's called a "Crackpac," and it's just about the last thing a Navy crew wants to do. It's miserable duty. It's hotter than hell itself down there in the south eastern Pacific, I can think of no more miserable place for an Alaskan like me - even Iraq wasn't as bad, climate wise that is. There were days where you'd get burned if you put your hand on the metal skin of the ship. The hull and superstructure would heat up to unbelievable temperatures during the day, and radiate heat into the ship all night, you slept covered in sweat - when you could sleep. Navy ships are cooled inside by chilled water systems that were designed for the northern latitudes (because we designed our ships to fight the Soviet Navy in the North Atlantic, duh), and the air conditioners don't work worth a crap in the hot waters off South America. For the same reason, the flash evaporators on older ships like mine and the Simpson don't work very well in warm water, so there's limited fresh water for showers, and what there is feels like warm piss. The humidity is almost always at a 100%, and you never feel clean, ever. Hell, I used to sweat in the shower.

The liberty in South America can be decent depending on where you are, but usually it's lousy, dirt, poverty, mosquitos and malaria pills. There's no fleet support. This means that instead of fueling at sea, we have to pull into port and fuel from tanker trucks - in some cases taking over a hundred tankers and up to twenty-four hours of backbreaking labor in sweltering heat.

Then there's the mission, hunting shithead drug runners on the high seas. It's dangerous, miserable, tedious, and frustrating. For every smuggler you catch, a hundred more get through to Mexico and California and it doesn't take you long to figure out that the war on drugs is a long lost cause. You can't stop cocaine smuggling by hunting down smugglers, or burning coca fields, or giving money to a hopelessly ineffective and corrupt Columbian government, or by making speeches, or by appointing a totally powerless sock puppet of a drug Czar. As long as there is a demand, there'll be a supply. Period. You see the utter, abject poverty of the Ecuadorian and Columbian peasants. You see the incredible, unbelievable amounts of money flowing south from gold bling wearing Los Angeles and New York and Bumfuck Indiana and you know there is an endless supply of desperate, hungry people willing to risk their lives on the open sea in order to get a piece of it. You see the hopelessly mired clusterfuck that is the American counter narcotics mission with the DEA, FBI, ICE, Coast Guard, Navy, Air Force, Customs, and a dozen other agencies all scrabbling for their piece of the glory, their moment in the sun on the War on Drugs, their little bit of the money. Nobody is in charge. There's no cooperation between agencies. There's no plan, but everybody has a secret agenda. There's nothing but back stabbing incompetence and corruption and rice bowl bullshit. And it becomes apparent fairly quickly, often before you leave homeport, that the agency you work for in South America, Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF South), is about as useful as a carbuncle on Dick Cheney's big white ass. JIATF South is where incompetent, back stabbing, glory hound officers go to die - or get rich and retire. The place is rotten from bottom to top, and side to side, but hell, it's duty in Key West, out of sight and out of mind.

Still, every time you make a bust you feel pretty dammed good about it. You might chase a go-fast smuggling boat for hours, pounding through the seas at flank speed until they run out of fuel, or crash, or just give up. Some times they shoot at you, and you get to blow them out of the water in a cloud of vaporized blow. Sometimes they throw the cocaine and heroin bales over the side of their boat in a desperate attempt to escape. Then you've got to go into the water after it, carefully because the concentration of cocaine HCL is so high that if you get any on your skin it'll stop your heart nearly instantly. And no matter how hopeless the War on Drugs is, at least those bales won't end up on the streets of America somewhere.

USS Simpson came home with 16 tons, most taken from a submarine smuggling vessel. Sixteen tons of cocaine, if you're having trouble visualizing what several billion dollars worth of drugs looks like, here's a picture of me and my intelligence team sitting on about ten tons. This picture was taken off the coast of the Galapagos Islands on June 1st, 2004 on the flight deck of USS Valley Forge. Those big black cubes we're sitting on are literally worth billions when cut with powered baby formula or dried milk or rat poison or boiled in gasoline to make crack. That's me, third from the right, second row - the guy with the radio mic on my right collar.

Altogether we brought home nearly twenty tons of coke and 40 something prisoners. Did it make a difference? Well, we'd like to think so, but somehow I doubt it.