Christmas

Had a good Christmas, I did.

Among other things, got a stationary bike on which to flay my cardiovascular system as well as a very nice weight bench for pushing and pulling various masses.

Gave Kris an iPod shuffle, which she had been coveting ever since we ordered one each for the boys.

The children made out quite well too.

Spent a lot of time with exended family both before during and after the day itself. More of that to come this weekend.

Pulled a joke on the wife by putting a crappy $1 dollar kitchen knife of the kind she had been pining for in her stocking. She was very gracious and did not complain at the quality but merely decided, internally, to go out and buy her own self a bloody good knife at the next opportunity. She later almost used the implements in question when she unwrapped the high-quality version of same that I had gifted her under the tree and realized what I had done.

She in turn, gave me a "gift from the heart" in the form of a bit of sappy doggerel verse in a very nicely wrapped box. I pretended to be touched though I know at one point as I read through it I had that 'glazed' look. Nevertheless I tried my best to spare her feelings. Later I learned she had done it on purpose and the poem was a thinly disguised list of clues as to what the real present was, the stationary bike aforementioned. It's a quality stationary bike. I'm very pleased. Though I am, perhaps, more pleased that my wife did not produce that horrible poem in earnest.

Our second youngest daughter had the last laugh when my wife opened her final present and discovered that it was an old cutting board she'd been missing for a week or two. The daughter responsible dissolved in giggles. Well done, my offspring.

New Test Post for the email

Subscribers should get an email about this...

The New Racism

For starters, racism is real in today's America. It exists. I've seen it.

Now I'll go on to point out something I'm finding endlessly amusing.

Background is required. Several months ago, centering around the release of Avatar: The Last Air Bender, there was a great deal of discussion concerning the whitewashing of that film and whitewashing in general. Folks were angry that the producers of Avatar had cast white actors to play characters that most people would imagine as asian from the TV show and story. Great anger and acid accusations of racism were leveled at said producers. Much of the attention, I suspect, was paid because of M. Night Shyamalan's involvement with the film.

I only heard about the uproar over Avatar because a friend of mine jumped in with both feet and shrieked in outrage with the best of them. Personally, I thought it was a molehill, but my apathy doesn't, or shouldn't, take away from the feelings of others on the matter.

Now enter the Thor film from Marvel Studios, and Idris Elba cast as Heimdall, a Norse deity. Again we have some folks getting a little upset over the casting. You see, Idris Elba is black, and most people would assume that Heimdall would be white, being Norse and all.

So, in one case we have whites being cast in roles that people imagine, reasonably, as asian and in the other we have a black man being cast in a role that people imagine, reasonably, as white. Same exact disconnect in both cases. The studios are clearly GETTING THE RACE WRONG when they're choosing the actors to play these imaginary characters.

Cue the same uproar. The same bitter sarcasm. The same rage. ... The crickets.

No one seems to care that a black man is playing the part of a norse god. I certainly don't and I think the few people that do are racist, a bit nuts, and perhaps dangerously so.

Yet now we see, a little uncomfortably, that those who objected so loudly to the casting of Avatar share a slice of their root philosophy on race with these people.

You're both racist. Deal with that and let's all move on.

Bonus link: My friend Dan Wells has posted on this same topic over on his blog. As always he is erudite and fascinating.

Nancy Fulda and bias

Just got linked to this great article on bias by Nancy Fulda, via Howard Tayler. She's apparently his sister-in-law and an accomplished researcher and deep thinker.

Very well put and well written. Highly recommended.

Fareed Zakaria

Just found a guy named Fareed Zakaria.

I'm really impressed. This article, which he wrote for Newsweek in the aftermath of 9/11, was amazing. In its tone and basic ideas I feel vindicated that it says many of the same things I've been saying for years. And Mr. Zakaria has actual creds to his name, not just seat of the pants armchair theorizing like me.

While the fact that I agree with him is nice for me, more importantly he speaks to and integrates many of the root ideas that other people skate around in favor of rhetoric. He doesn't gloss over anything that I could see. While not claiming to be perfectly unbiased (impossible) he does present a solid, clear look at both sides of the issues he's discussing.

I'll definitely be looking for and reading more of his stuff.

Wikileaks two

Lots of people out there on the web pooh poohing the idea that wikileaks is costing lives.  They don't claim that wikileaks hasn't cost lives. Most of them simply claim that it pales in comparison to the number of lives lost due to actions by the governments wikileaks targeted. A fair point. And, if you assume that the west, the United States and Britain in particular, is corrupt and murderous by nefarious design, you can stop thinking at that point and simply wave your placard. I don't share that view and find those that do a little long on the yammer and short on the hammer. They speak, confidently, from under the umbrella of freedom, security and prosperity those very governments provide.

There's another necessary half of the argument, usually left implicit by these rhetoricians. You must also believe that the threats of terrorism and rabid jihad the west is facing and fighting are largely nebulous and illusory. I direct your attention to the New York of nine years ago. You may then stepping stone your way to the present over countless incidents of violence and cruelty deliberately perpetrated against innocents by the very same individuals and their groups that are so necessarily (for this particular argument to hold water) illusory.

The west has not been perfect in its prosecution of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. There are plenty of examples of western soldiers and leaders doing wrong. Such incidents are few and far between, as evidenced by the attention they get when they do happen.

The massive and pungent irony of the whole wikileaks situation is that wikileaks targeted only the side it is safe to target. Exposing the inner workings of Al Quaeda and like groups is, after all, awfully difficult and dangerous.

As for wikileaks being treasonous, no. It's only treasonous for Bradley Manning. For folks of other citizenships it's called espionage.

On Writing 2: The Man Behind the Curtain.

I'm a pretty straightforward guy. I say that with a little bit of my tongue in my cheek because I'm a fairly accomplished liar. Working for years in the intelligence community will do that for you. It's definitely a learned skill though, not one that I was born with.

Author's are accomplished liars. That statement is true on many levels. Fictioneers get paid to make stuff up that is patently not true. Lying, making up stories, is what we do, by definition. At the same time, everyone knows it's all lies so we're not deceiving anyone.

But authors are liars in another sense too. We deliberately mislead and deceive our readers. Lately, I've been thinking of this as 'operating behind the curtain.' And I've been thinking about it because I am not comfortable operating behind the curtain yet, as an author.

There's something in me that feels that if I know it, the reader should know it. I think it comes from being a reader for so long that I naturally occupy the reader headspace. In the reader headspace the reader must know at least as much as the characters know, usually more, or the story feels false and contrived. An author who lets his characters know something that the reader doesn't and uses that to build tension or mystery is breaking the agreement that I, as a reader, expect him to adhere to. I hate it when authors do it and I really don't want to do it as an author. It leads me to feel that if I, the author, know it, the reader should know it. But that's obviously ridiculous when I say it out loud like that.

This gets particularly silly when I feel that I should be surprised, as a reader would be, by my own stories. It's not something I do consciously, but I've started to identify this tendency in myself as an author. Heck, looking back, it makes it obvious why I didn't know how my first novel was going to end until I was actually faced with writing the last few chapters. Discovering this about myself is good in a 'knowing is half the battle' kind of way, but also bad in that it's a problem I have, since it binds my hands as an author.

Intellectually I know that an author manipulates his readers through misdirection and manipulation but I've been having trouble doing it. I daresay Tolkien knew Gandalf wasn't really dead, or at least that he would come back, long before he wrote that bit. Operating behind the curtain, keeping secrets from the reader, is something I have been unconsciously avoiding when, as an author, I should be embracing it.

As I say, now that I can see what I've been doing I can fix it. Heck, I can turn it into a strength. I thought it was interesting, though, that I had the trouble in the first place, considering how much I lie.

John Steakley, RIP

John Steakley, author of Armor and Vampire$, as well as quite a few short stories, has passed away after a five year bout with cancer.

I first encountered John Steakley when I read his novel Armor. It's a brilliant science fiction piece about a troubled and driven man fighting as a soldier in power armor against an inhuman and terrifying enemy. It's also about Jack Crow, a con man, and his marks. The two worlds intersect in fascinating and compelling ways. Brilliant.

I've been through more than a dozen copies of Armor, re-reading them until they fall apart or loaning them to friends who never return them.

I never met John Steakley, which I regret, and I wish mightily that he had written a few more books.

Godspeed, sir.

wikileaks

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="191" caption="wikileaks founder and head prima donna Julian Assange"][/caption]

I find this whole wikileaks phenomenon endlessly fascinating while at the same time a little pitiful.

In theory, I approve of the mission statement wikileaks touts. Government transparency is good in most cases. Protecting their sources, also excellent. Vetting of stories before publishing? Essential. But for all the bluster they're surprisingly mercenary.

They claim to be a source for good in the world. Yet they're constantly targetting the biggest sources of good in the world. It grabs them headlines to accuse the US and leak classified documents from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it also has the advantage of being very safe for them. Though they make a show of 'being afraid' they know very well, as does the rest of the world, that the US and Western European countries don't go in for the kind of extra-legal retaliation they claim to be afraid of.

Who does go in for that kind retaliaion? The kill your family and cut your head off on TV kind of retaliation? The very groups and countries wikileaks fails rather conspicuously to report on. The very groups the US and Western Europe (along with other notable allies) are in violent conflict with right now. Let's see some juicy leakage of the operational details of AlQuaeda or Hamas or Sendero Luminoso. How about North Korea for heaven's sake. China anyone?

If you want to be seen as a force for good in the world you ought to do something other than throw stones at the side that doesn't deliberately kill women and children as a matter of policy.

As for protecting sources, perhaps you also ought to protect those innocents you put at risk with your leaks. Locals working for the US in Iraq and Afghanistan are doing nothing but what they think is right, yet you put their lives at risk by publishing their names where the jihadists can find them. There are good reasons to classify documents and protecting sources is one of them. Strange how that cuts both ways and how wikileaks doesn't seem to care.

And vetting your stories before publishing? Please. How about Collateral Murder? What a joke.

Babykiller

That's a new one on me, but not my father.

Although the actual word 'babykiller' was not used it was a sobering experience the other night when a 'friend' equated the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the murder of innocents. It was done offhandedly, as though it were a given. Having served in both theaters, I can assure you (as I tried to assure him, to no effect) that the comparison is ridiculous. Yet there are people out there who actually think that. Apparently, I know such a person. Not something I was expecting to discover among my circle of friends.

On a more palatable note, Brad Torgerson has a very nice blog post up today about some of the other kinds of experiences we who serve in the military have at home. Pleasanter ones.

Wil Wheaton, Chaos Elf

You know, I'm always hovering on the brink of removing Wil Wheaton's blog from my daily reading list, for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is that he doesn't post daily. Not even close. Is it really worth the time and click to check daily? Then he goes and posts stuff like his latest. Man, I like that guy.

Gays in the Military

Is 'gay' the right term nowadays? I can't keep track of the changing currents of politically correct speech. We'll go with it. If you're offended, it's your own fault for I mean none.

I was perusing Drudge when I came across this picture. I felt a flash of what can only be called malice and anger. I identify with my brother's in uniform, and to see cops cuffing one raises my ire. What the hell? I think. Were I to see this on the street I'd immediately go find out what the heck was going on.

And I'd discover, no doubt, that the cops were perfectly justified in arresting this fellow for trespassing. Then we'd all get on with our jobs. It's that initial reaction I'm interested in.

I'm assuming that guy has every right to wear the desert uniform he's got on. I'm also assuming he's gay.

There are huge problems associated with gays serving openly in the military. Problems that range from 'what do you do about shower facilities' to 'sexual harassment anyone?' to 'there are a lot of ignorant people in the military who have a problem with gays' and everything in between. Almost none of these are addressed by those who crusade for the cause of gays serving openly in the military. To even bring these concerns up gets you called a homophobe and/or a bigot as rational discussion is immediately, and often deliberately, shut down.

So, what about gays in the military?

I don't have a solution to the logistical, ethical, or social objections raised by the idea. I do have my gut reaction to a fellow soldier being handled by the police though. That's my brother, man, back off.

Postscript: It pains me to have to bring the question up but, if that dude getting cuffed did NOT earn that uniform (and the way he's got that beret pulled down to his ears makes me question just a little) he can go fly a kite.

Staff Sgt. Giunta MoH

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="244" caption="Staff Sgt. Giunta"]
[/caption]

Well done sergeant Giunta. I'm sorry for your loss.

This story was very interesting to me. Read it for yourself though. Here I talk about my own take on things.

An 'L' ambush. Well designed and executed by the Taliban in the Korengal valley, Afghanistan. An ambush is THE most devastating attack in any infantry unit's repertoire, and an 'L' ambush is the best of the ambushes. This is because of the shape.

An L ambush is just what it sounds like. You pick a bend in the road and set up your main ambushing element along one side of the road before the bend and then another element AT the bend where they can shoot ALONG the section of road your first element will be shooting into. Usually you put your machine gun at the bend and open the ambush with that since it's the 'most casualty producing' weapon.

[caption id="attachment_447" align="alignleft" width="128" caption="L-Ambush"][/caption]

Getting caught in this kind of ambush was absolutely crappy for Sgt. Giunta's unit. And it's almost impossible to avoid.  Ambushes are hard to detect, and even harder to survive. The only response to being ambushed that has any hope of success is to immediately turn and rush your attackers, hoping to get in among them and start killing them back before you're all dead. An 'L' makes this response tactic even less effective than it already is (I mean seriously, rushing into to the teeth of the enemy's guns is the best you can come up with? Yes it is.) because no matter which of the two elements you choose to rush, there are still guys in the other shooting into your flank. Wicked awful. Entire patrols get wiped out like this.

Except, apparently, when it's the Taliban ambushing Americans. The CBS account of the ambush is harrowing to read. Miserable. It leaves the impression that the Taliban kicked American butt. But you have to realize that if it had been Americans doing the ambushing, everybody would have been dead. EVERYBODY... except those the Americans wanted to take prisoner.

The truth is that the Taliban ambush was surprisingly ineffective.   But you have to know something about the subject to realize it.

I mourn for those killed and wounded in this ambush, as with every action where my brothers are hurt or killed. Sgt. Giunta's actions were heroic. That he believes every one of his comrades on that patrol would have done the same for him only speaks to the caliber of the American fighting man; it doesn't lessen his actions.

Bonus link.

Veteran's Day 2010

One thing the Democrats, or at least the Obama's PR machine, do well is organize people over the web. While I was reading an article lamenting the fact that Obama is in Indonesia, remembering Indonesian veterans, on Nov 11th I received an email claiming to be from his wife.

This email led me to a well put together and, seemingly, fairly effective site designed to help people so inclined to volunteer and help military families. Military families need the help. They are unsung heroes in our wars.

My father tells a story. One day while my father was serving in the jungles of VietNam his own father, my grandfather Marcus, was going about his business as on any given day. A messenger arrived with a telegram. My grandfather received it, stared at it for a while without opening it and then found a place to take a seat. He faced, grimly, the fact that his life was now over. His son was dead.

He opened the telegram and read it. "Happy birthday, Marcus! Love, Vance." My grandfather thought about it for a moment and realized that it was, in fact, his birthday that day. The telegram was from his brother, Vance, a prankster of questionable taste.

The soldier very rarely has to live with the imminent possibility of his own death. He knows when he is and is not in danger. His family and loved ones live with it every moment of every day that he is away.

Bonus link.

The Elections 2010

Random thoughts:

It was awesome to hear the NPR newscasters occasionally slipping up and referring to the Democrats as 'we' throughout the night.

Some people, in reaction to the Tea Party's call for smaller government, have been snarkily pointing out the 'hypocrisy' of "Old white people calling for less government while cashing federal checks." Really? So, they should just accept that the taxes they've been paying have been involuntary donations they should be happy to NOT recoup? Truly old people are in a fix (along with the rest of us). They spent most of their lives paying into Social Security instead of investing that money on the promise by the federal government that they'd get a retirement check. Only  to see the federal government break open the coffers and loot their retirement money with no plan for putting it back. Now they're not allowed to complain about big spendy government because they cash the checks they do get? Good grief.

Listening to mainstream media pundits yammering on about how, now that the GOP has a majority in the House, they're really going to have to 'compromise' and 'reach across the aisle.' Make me laugh harder why don't you. These are the same people who were crowing about how the Democrats didn't have to do that when they had the majority.

Fun to look at that map while listening to media folks desperately try to minimize the implications and impact of the sweeping Republican victories.

So awesome to have felt free to vote Libertarian in a few of the races yesterday.

Elder Eyring, President Uchtdorf, and Soldiering

As I grew up I was always sure that I wanted to be in the military. For a while I thought I wanted to be a full-time infantry officer. I enrolled in ROTC in college.  I joined the 19th Special Forces Group (National Guard) as an enlisted counter-intelligence agent. I spent the 9 months of Initial Entry Training watching the active duty military lifestyle at work and play. It made me realize I wanted to stay a full time civilian. I also stayed enlisted, thank heavens.

From back then until now, 30 years in the LDS church, 4 years at Brigham Young University, 13 years in the national guard, 2 combat deployments; I always had the impression that service in the military was seen as an unwise choice for LDS men. Plenty of us served, but we were looked down upon just a little by the LDS culture.

It's not objecively or doctrinally true. Like I said, it was simply the impression I had and it was due to several factors. Some people at BYU (it is an academic institution after all, grubbing after government grants with the best of them) actively look down on the military services, in lockstep with the extreme left. And taking a degree in English exposed me to many such. Also, I've lost count of the talks I've heard and the testimonies born by single-term servicemen about how the military turned them into sinners when in reality all it did was force them to step away from the apron strings. I also had a long string of sunday school teachers and fellow members who were less than encouraging to my martial leanings. 

All this has combined to leave me feeling a little at sea, left to find my own soldier specific spiritual guidance in the scriptures. Fortunately, there's plenty there. It's looked at as odd and incomprehensible by much of the church's membership who consider most of Alma to be ... off, but it gives me joy to find it.

Imagine my glee when Elder Eyring gave me a huge blast of it over the modern pulpit at General Conference in April of 2009. In his talk entitled "Man Down!" he tells the story of the two delta operators who lost their lives saving a single helicopter pilot from being ripped apart by the howling ravening enemy mob in Mogadishu Somalia. To my memory that was the first time I ever heard soldiers performing a soldier's mission held up as good examples by a general authority in my church. Thank you Elder Eyring. Someday I'd like to shake your hand for that.

Don't get me wrong, soldiers have been held up as good examples many times, but always for things other than being a soldier. It's always been for resisting temptation or being brave in difficult cirumstances, and so on, nothing really specific to soldiering. Elder Eyring's address changed all that for me.

I got another blast of it last Sunday, October 31, 2010. President Uchtdorf gave a fireside specifically to members of the military and their spouses. I hope somebody recorded it because I'd like to hear and/or read it again. You might think that soldier specific teaching would be guaranteed at such a single purpose fireside. You'd be wrong though. President Uchtdord could easily, and profitably for us, given us an hour and a half of teaching starring soldiers but not specific to soldiers, like so many have before. He didn't though. He went all out, designating the United States military, by name, as a force for good in the world. We were spiritually well fed, as soldiers, throughout.

One thing in particular stood out for me though.

It's a small thing. Something I should have noticed before, but which I never put together and which he specifically emphasized. President Uchtdorf pointed out, with some satisfaction, that the individual chosen by God to stand atop our temples and announce the Savior when he returns is a soldier.

China rocks on

Over the years I've heard a lot of pundits talking about America's cultural imperialism. In some cases this is seen as good, in some bad. A lot of people lament the disappearance of traditions and traditional pasttimes, clothing and food in favor of cigarettes, jeans and McDonalds in third world countries.

It IS sad to see the old things disappear entirely. But at the same time it's great to see the ideas behind democracy and the rule of law gaining currency around the world in lockstep with our TV shows.

And then we have China. Through sheer numbers and political cussedness they've managed to maintain a measure of cultural independence not seen in many other countries that were, until so very recently, incredibly poor.

I'm kind of stoked about it to tell you the truth. Any country that throws parties like that one is focusing on things other than the United States, negative or otherwise. They've got their own concerns and interests and artistic vision.

Frankly, I'm kind of sick of a lot of the pap that we're turning out as a culture nowadays and of being the only country that matters on the world stage.

Artistically, new blood is exciting and some of it is going to come from China. Politically and economically, well...I for one would like to be among the first to express my admiration for our new occidental masters...

Elizabeth Moon and the Ground Zero Mosque

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="190" caption="Elizabeth Moon"][/caption]

I know Mrs. Moon. Not particularly well. We've sat across from each other at dinners, talked while we walked around a con, and so forth. She's a very nice lady. We differ on many political issues.

She wrote a blog post this year about the proposed mosque at ground zero. I thought it was well written, thoughtful, and I largely agreed with it.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Elizabeth Moon was disinvited as Guest Of Honor from WisCon because of the contents of that post. She is being described as a bigot and a racist. In a shallow search of the internet the negative response to her post was vociferous and ill-informed. By that I mean that the vigor of those decrying her words seemed inversely proportional to how well they understood what she'd actually said in the post itself.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. For decades now ideologues have been preying on individuals who can't be troubled to fully understand any given issue. If the soundbite doesn't make you feel warm and fuzzy, like a kindly revolutionary, well, you must be against that. If the soundbite doesn't resonate with your own fears, give you a sense of belonging to the in-group, well, you must be against that. Carry on, wave your placard, dump your trash on the ground for the workers to pick up.

Mrs. Moon's post was largely a call to active citizenship, to responsibility, to personal accountability. A democratic republic cannot function properly if the citizens are worried only about themselves. The well-being of the group, the nation, the country, must figure largely into a good citizen's responsibility equation. Mrs. Moon is well entitled to make that statement having served in the Marine Corps among a great many other things. Presumably she did at least a few good things that got her the Guest of Honor invitation to WisCon in the first place.

Part of being a good citizen here in the United States is a willingness to openly consider ideas that may be different from your own. Discuss them on their merits. Examine your own ideas in their light to see if, perhaps, you can learn something. It is the mark of intellectual cowardice and dishonesty to refuse to examine, refuse to discuss, refuse even to entertain, ideas that may be different from your own.

I'm looking at you WisCon.

OK, it's seriously time

that I saw Nathan Fillion in something serious. Like a drama. Something more serious than Firefly.

Being a Loser

Just read an interesting article on bullying in the Christian Science Monitor (Thanks Stacy!). It talks about what does and doesn't work when you're the victim of bullying. Looks like good advice to me. Excellent advice even.

Two things jumped out at me. First, it links to another article with the following statement:

A decades' long focus on self-esteem may have given some kids too much pride, making them more forceful with others. And psychologists suggest the focus on kids' confidence may mean a subsequent lag in mediation and negotiation skills - knowledge that could defuse volatile situations.

The idea that too much pride makes kids more forceful with others and lacking in mediation skills is fascinating. I don't think it's true. Real, healthy pride or self-esteem does not lead a kid to bully others. It leads them to do what they think is right despite peer pressure, among many other positive things.

But we're not talking about real, healthy pride or self-esteem. In the public school systems and many private ones were talking about false praise handed out to kids who haven't earned it because educational group-think prescribes handfuls of it regardless of performance.   The problem is and has been for years that the subjects of that false praise, the kids, know perfectly well that it's false. And the kids who earn the real praise can't tell the difference between it and the stuff you're handing to the moron at the end of the row.

The message that effusive unearned praise sends is not the intended one. Instead of telling the kids that they're worth something, we've been telling kids they're not worth anything except false praise. In a situation where they get praised no matter what they do, there is no way for them to earn real praise. All they get is a constant repitition of the refrain "Here have some false praise, you're not worth the real stuff." And when you hand the same crap to those who excel as you hand to those who don't, where's the incentive to even try? As far as the kids can tell, trying isn't worth squat.

I haven't done and can't do a real study of the matter but I would not be at all surprised if bullying was a direct result of a desperate search for a way to get ahead, excel, stand above one's peers. To WIN. There have always been bullies. When I was a kid, they were usually the poor bastards who had real problems at home or in their personal lives. They were trying to lift themselves by pushing others down. The problem we're running into now is that the false praise we've been handing out for that decade mentioned above doesn't make troubled kids feel better about themselves, it makes all the kids feel worse, because it's a lie. So they look for self-esteem in the hall.

Don't get me wrong. Kids who fail don't need to be ridiculed. They need to be praised too. But it has to be real praise, and sometimes it's hard to find a way to hand that out. It's never impossible though.

And it never hurt anyone to be told, "You failed at this because you didn't try hard enough. Study more, practice longer and you'll succeed." Being a loser at something isn't the end of the world.

And now we come to the second thing that stands out. What happens to the kids who fight back against the bullies?

Seriously, what happens to them? When bullying gets physical, the appropriate response is physical. If a big bully is trying to hurt you, stabbing him with your pencil is perfectly appropriate. Heck, your buddy stabbing him with his pencil is appropriate. Yet, in our culture today, the kid defending himself or another kid in that manner would be kicked out and sued. That's another underlying problem in our society. We protect bullies by denying the victims, their friends, and any civic-minded bystanders the ability to respond appropriately.

Bullying on a Bus in New York

This story appalls me for several reasons. It's about three kids who beat up another kid on a school bus, apparently because they thought he was gay.

The story mentions the victim being afraid to come forward. It says that some people think parents should get involved, asking their children, how was your day? It even mentions that the driver and 'matron' (whatever that means) are being questioned for not reporting the preliminary bullying that had, apparently, been going on for weeks. All well and good.

I think a better outcome to this incident would have been the driver and/or matron storming to the back of the bus as the three little bullies stomped kicked and punched, grabbed them by their collars and either sat them down at the front of the bus or simply tossed them off to fend for themselves. Then they should have tended to the victim and called the cops, names in hand.

Think about what would have happened to the driver and matron though, in the political climate we live in today. If the bullies resisted them, very likely, the adults would, very likely, have been castigated in the press for assaulting minors.

You know it's true.

Michael Chiklis, The Shield, and No Ordinary Family

I first encountered Michael Chiklis in The Shield. The Shield is a very violent cop show with dark, anti-heroes for protagonists. It's also one of the best cop shows I've ever seen with one of the best endings of all TV in my opinion.

I didn't see Chiklis again, really, until No Ordinary Family came on. I was pulled into trying the show by the premise, as advertised on Hulu, of an average family developing super powers. I've watched three episodes now and, I think the writers are getting lazier.

They've made the same mistake one too many times in my book. Moving the plot along by making the characters do stupid things is just awful.

I realize now that it was really the combination of the super-power premise with Chiklis himself that led me to try it out. I kept imagining The Shield with super powers thrown in. But Chiklis does NOT play Macky with super powers. Which is too bad, because that would have been super cool.

Ooh, interesting

Scientifiction DOES predict the future.

Nicely put, Brad

Political Correctness

Have a song

This came up in my shuffle this morning. Made my commute to hear it again.

Money as a Brainwashing Tool

So, a lot of brouhaha in the news recently about where money that American organizations spend on American political campaigns comes from, foreign money being bad.

I'm not all that worked up about the issue. I'm a little leery at the idea of foreign interests meddling in our elections. They should mind their own business. But at the same time, that kind of crap works a lot better in the systems they're used to, thinly veiled or open dictatorships, or rule by the elite; and not so well in an actual functioning democratic republic. Which is probably why we've had so much success meddling in other peoples elections over the years.

But in the end, in our country, an election is about the candidates and their ideas. If people are voting for someone because they've seen them in more TV spots, the fault lies not with the people who paid for those TV spots but with the morons making their decisions that way.

Money can have a huge effect on an election but the only legitimate gripe is if a candidate's ideas are never heard by the electorate  due to a lack of funds. In this, the information age, that's less and less of a concern. A voter going to the polls while uninformed has only himself to blame today. Trying to shift that blame from the voter to the evil corporations or foreign investors who failed to inform him through TV is missing the point entirely and taking it as a given that the voters are mindless sheep.

The constitution was not written with mindless sheep in mind. Perhaps the voters ARE mindless sheep though. The fact remains that nobody forced them to be that way.

The fact that the candidate with the most money often wins is either a sad commentary on the ignorance of our citizens or a demonstration that those citizens voted with their pocketbooks before ever going to the polls. Since foreign interests can't do the latter, their influence is limited entirely to those who are too stupid to think for themselves. Meh. We reap what we sow.

Bonus link

Not going to war

Not going to war, for most people, is a good thing. Not all.

What could I possibly mean by that, you may ask with a suspicious and horrified look?  Who is this 'all' you speak of in the negative?

Surely, war is bad. Yes it is. There are still worse things.

Surely, no one sane would WANT their country to go to war. Absolutely true. No one sane wants their country to go to war. In the same way no one wants to have to shoot a burglar in their house.

Surely, no one sane wants, personally, to go to war. Meh, yes and no. I'm sure there are people who would very cogently and succinctly make the point that I am not sane. For I want to go to war.

Surely I have done my part, having already been to war. Surely I could now stay home, honor satisfied, and enjoy my family. Yes, I have, and yes I could. But the war is not over. In some ways it is just beginning. There are still parts to be played, and if not by me, then by who?

I'm thinking about this because of a good friend of mine, who also wants to go to war. The difference for him is that he has not yet been.

My unit is a good one. We have deployed companies to the war on terror three times and once an entire battalion. Collectively we have killed a whole grundle of bad men who desperately needed killing, and helped a whole bunch of other people who needed help. We have done well, collecting honors and accolades. We have yet to lose a man to the war.

The last deployment, though, was a few years ago and the next has been pushed back so far that many of the men in my unit despaired of ever going back and left, seeking other units who ARE deploying soon, or contracting jobs with the famed "military industrial complex." (My unit doesn't typically attract the sort who only join the military for the college benefits though most of us have used them to good effect)

My friend is considering attaching himself to a unit in another state that is deploying but finds itself critically short of men with our expertise. I'm considering going with him. It's a hard sell for a man in my position, but can I let my friend go alone?

We would all prefer that there were no wars, no oppression, no murder, no crime. MacArthur was right when he said:

The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

Yet, if our country is at war, we want to go. It's what drove us to join the military in the first place.

Bonus link

Jump tomorrow

And it's on a brand new dropzone. The third in as many months.



No one in our unit has ever jumped it. I sure hope I can figure out where we are before leading the way out of the plane.

Edit: Well, we lived and it was one of the nicest jumps I've done.

Soft opening. Sherpas or C-23s usually are since they're so slow.

Soft landing. Farmer's field with dirt like talcum powder combined with very low winds.

Pretty. The landscape in Western Eagle Mountain Valley actually looks more like the pic on the right than I expected. Put more mountains on the horizon and you've pretty much got it. Considering the pic on the right is actually over Germany that's saying something.

SG-U S:2 Ep:2

I really got into this series during its first season. I heard about it because Scalzi talked about it on the whatever, and how he's a creative consultant for the show. What an awesome gig.

I watch it entirely on Hulu, and loved the first season. Second season is shaping up to be just as cool and well done. One thing about this episode though, bugged me a little.

Massive spoiler. If you haven't seen the episode yet, do not read on.

The Holy Mill of Murder

Mankind as it is constituted, is a boil and a canker. Observe the specimens of any nation. Man is weak, greedy, craven, lustful, prey to every species of depravity and vice. He will lie, cheat, steal, murder, melt down the very statues of the gods and coin their gold as money for whores. This is man. This is his nature, as all the poets attest.
"Fortunately God in his mercy, has provided a counterpoise to our species' innate depravity. That gift..., is war.
"War, not peace, produces virtue. War, not peace, purges vice. War, and preparation for war, call forth all that is noble and honorable in man. It unites him with his brothers and binds them in selfless love, eradicating in the crucible of necessity, all which is base and ignoble. There in the holy mill of murder, the meanest of men may seek and find that part of himself, concealed beneath the corrupt, which shines forth brilliant and virtuous, worthy of honor before the gods. Do not despise war, nor delude yourself that mercy and compassion are superior virtues, to manly valor."

Polynikes of Sparta - 480 B.C.

I haven't traced the origin of this quote. I attribute it as I have above because it matches what I've heard over the years. If the attribution is wrong please correct me. And no, I don't think Steven Pressfield was the first to say this.

Monster Hunter Vendetta

The Monster Hunter series is a bit of a phenom in my book. Larry Correia, the author, self-published the first installment, Monster Hunter International. Due to his connections in the world of guns and shooting instruction and general firearms badassery, as well as it being an awesome fun read, it sold a few thousand copies. He got picked up by Baen and now the sequel is out. Monster Hunter Vendetta.

I saw Larry the other day at authorpalooza in a Barnes & Noble. Still a really nice guy and fun to talk to. I bought MHV, had him sign it and I'm halfway through it now. Just as fun, irreverent, and mile-a-minute as the first one.

But the cover quote. It's a little odd. "Fast-paced action sequences and ultra-accurate firearms details." Ultra-accurate firearms details?

It's true enough. Larry is a master of his trade. His firearms details are ultra-accurate. But the book has a much broader appeal than that. No doubt readers of Gun World, where the author of that quote, Jerry Ahern, writes appreciate ultra-accurate firearms details more than most but...the books have so much more as well.

The books have cool twists and emotional depth and really good pacing and nifty ideas. They're just plain fun to read.

Edit: So, I just finished reading MHV. So cool. Not a wasted paragraph. The end is as epically awesome as the first and the ride there as thrilling and fast paced as anything I've ever read. An absolute blast.

Deadly Owls

I really liked this White Ninja.

Blindly Writing the Elephant

So, I'm almost completely done with my second novel. This is the one I'm collaborating with Brandon Sanderson on. Working title: The Lurker.

I think I've smashed my face against, then managed to wrap my arms around, a writing principle worth sharing.

I started with a 10,000 word outline that Brandon wrote. We discussed the world and basic plot we would be working with for about four hours over two meetings before he wrote the outline.

I wrote my first novel with an outline too, a numbered list.  I can't speak for Brandon on The Lurker but for me, coming up with an outline was a very mechanical process.

Arbitrarily I aimed for 120,000 words which translated neatly into 30 4,000 word chapters. My outline had 30 chapters in it. Three viewpoint characters translated to 10 chapters each. Three try/fail cycles worked out to three chapters per cycle per character, which I dutifully labeled as such on my outline.

Then I filled in the basic events for each cycle. What, exactly, were my characters failing and then succeeding at? What did their mini-arcs consist of and how did they fit into the big book-arc?  I already had a basic idea of what I wanted the book to be about and lots of cool scenes that had written themselves in my head and so forth. That made this process a mix of putting the pieces in their proper places and filling in the blanks.

The elephant tromped into the room when it came time to actually write the chapters so summarized on my outline. I stepped forward, hands outstretched, and started feeling that guy.

It was my book. I knew the basic shape.  So there was no, 'Oh, this is a snake...' garbage. But it was definitely a process of discovery as I wrote each chapter. Some details (a lot of them really) made themselves known, either springing from my subconscious or becoming obvious due to context. Others, also a lot, I had to forge and hammer out in the creative fires. And it was all fun to do.

Later I realized that things were much easier for me if I also outlined each chapter before I actually started in on the actual prose. In most cases, what I ended up with was less an outline for each chapter than notes on my brainstorming session for the chapter, roughly chrono-organized. Once I knew where I was going to that level of detail, getting there was almost all fun. The niftiest things pop up out of nowhere.

The principle?  Same as always. Just climb on and write.

My process is definitely more mechanical than a pure discovery writer, but less mechanical than some outliners. It's mine, it works for me. It will probably change. And someday I fully expect to discover that it's not an elephant at all but a bloody Tiger, and have to change everything.

Thus ends my very first POST ON WRITING.

Working out, exercise.

A guy named Mark Rippetoe once said, "Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general." I've found this to be true, not just in my military experiences, but in life generally.



I'm not talking about powerlifters. I'm talking about people who could help me move all my boxes of books without hurting themselves. People who could grab the A pillar of my car when I forget to put on the brake and keep it from rolling away while I do.

Nor am I talking about marathon runners. I'm talking about people who could run up five flights of stairs and tell me the building's on fire without losing consciousness in the middle of the critical sentence. People who could take the scout troop on a hike or a bike ride and not get left behind.

Like the man said, 'more useful in general.'

Where are these people? I look around and it seems there are fewer everyday.

In fact, the US is finally emerging from a long awkward period where, in the collective consciousness, being 'in shape' meant being either a powerlifter or a marathon runner. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with being a powerlifter or a marathon runner. The problem was not with the disciplines themselves. The problem was that people grew up thinking that anything different or less focused was not worthwhile. The concept of simply being in the kind of shape that would allow you to do a lot of varied physical work was lost. If you didn't want to be a boulder or a stick figure, exercising was not for you. We are the poorer for it.

There's a new movement out there that focuses on 'capacity for work' when it comes to exercising. It stresses the right things, in my opinion, and can be scaled to any desired level of intensity. Alas, I fear that my generation may largely be lost to it.

Working out under this school of thought is still hard. Varied work doesn't mean easy work. The deal with the wall is still the same: "You hit the wall and the wall moves back an inch. Repeat." The varied routines and exercises are more interesting to work through, but you still have to fight through the suck if you want to improve.

In my opinion one of the easiest places to start is CrossFit. Read up, be smart, and regularly push past your limits. It won't take you long and as you learn it will get easier.

I promise you'll feel better. Your body was designed to get stronger.

The Leading Edge

So, the word just went out that the humanities department at Brigham Young University has cut funding to The Leading Edge magazine yet again. I am not surprised. The Leading Edge is a good magazine that publishes genre stories, science fiction and fantasy. The humanities department at BYU is littered with literary types who desperately want to be respected by their peers in the rest of academia but are stymied at every turn by the moral standards BYU holds them to. (I know this because I got a degree in English from that august institution)

Imagine their horror when they gaze upon The Leading Edge, churning out genre drivel (otherwise known as thoughtful and well written science fiction and fantasy stories as well as articles relevant to the field) and using up valuable budget dollars. Horror of horrors, The Leading Edge also gets submissions from all over the world and subscribers (sadly few in number) who aren't other literary academic professionals. How dare they? Let us cut their funding, ignorant proles.

I myself had a limited experience at The Leading Edge, mostly reading slush and doing the occasional illustration. But that was because I ended up working with "Life the Universe and Everything" the scifi and fantasy symposium that gets put on in spite of itself every year at BYU. However, the basic desktop publishing and photoshop skills I started with and which landed me the last job I held, for seven years, I learned through The Leading Edge and the symposium together.

Dan Wells had a much more interesting and intensive experience there and he explains why it was valuable.  I can only concur.

Help out The Leading Edge by subscribing. I did.

Proof

I first saw this video years ago. Ran across it again today.



Living proof, a smoking gun really, that shows we could all get along just fine if we could just figure out how to do without governments.

Tax hikes on "the rich" hit everyone.

Perfect example cited at a second or third remove over on the Whatever. Read it.

It certainly is a little lame to complain about not having enough money when you're making 250K and have to let your nanny, gardener and housecleaner go because of a tax hike. I recommend not doing that except among other similarly afflicted socialites. Here's the world's smallest violin.

However, ask yourself where the sympathy is for the nanny, gardener, and house cleaner.  They're being let go as a direct result of that tax hike. The same taxes that "stick it to the man" also stick it to the everyday joe the man employs. This is true whether it's directly as a gardener, nanny or housecleaner to said man or indirectly as the pool guy whose services are no longer required, or even the maid at the one hotel the man doesn't go to when he shortens his vacation this year due to financial concerns.

Corporations don't let VPs go when they get hit with a big tax hike, they lay off guys and gals like me.

To Mr. Scalzi's point, Henderson is still doing just fine. It's those domestic servants out looking for work now, not Henderson. But, I suppose that's alright as long as the politicians can crow about 'taxing the rich' and everybody thinks that's smart.

Sometimes you must.

I've run across a strange plethora of internodes today referencing pets and dogs and cats as companions and friends. Not the least of these was Wil Wheaton's post about his new dog and his old dog. As well as OK Go's video for their song White Knuckles.

This has left me with a strong desire to ramble interminably on about my own feelings on pets. I grew up with cats, lots of cats. Dogs are OK too, though they tend to smell. Then I went and married a woman who not only doesn't particularly like cats but is strongly allergic to them as well as anything else with fur. No cats in my house. This leaves a nostalgic emotional gap.

Once, in Afghanistan, I almost got in a knife fight with a teammate to protect a cat that had pooped in his HMMV's seat. No blood was shed, though I soon arranged a new home for the cat on our next trip outside the FOB.

So, I still like cats even though I can't keep any. I'll always stop to pet one and it fills the gap a little to feel the warmth and hear the purr.

The most significant cat event in my life in the last ten years was not the knife fight either. It's not a happy memory, so be warned.

It happened on a busy business district street in Salt Lake City, Utah. I was stopped three cars back from the light in the middle of three lanes.  All the lanes were full at least twenty cars back. Up ahead of me, at the head of the lane to my left, some truly evil people rolled down the window of their beater car to up-end a kitten out of a bag and onto the road. The kitten, probably 4 or 5 months old, landed on its feet and looked back where it had come from. The light changed. I started forward slowly so the people behind wouldn't rear end me when I stopped to pick up the kitten.

The kitten, freaked out by the cars suddenly moving, dashed to hide under the first car in my lane, the rear tires of which caught its hips. The poor thing went down and started yowling, screaming really, and flipping its crushed and broken body around in paroxysms of pain. I was horrified. The second car missed the kitten entirely. As I rolled up on the pitiful spasming thing I realized there was only one thing I could do. Gritting my teeth I accelerated and steered my front tire over the kitten's front end. The screaming stopped.

I continued through the intersection and caught a glimpse of the beater car disappearing down the road where it had turned left. I considered turning left illegally and following the blackhearted bastards until they stopped and I could confront them. I knew how that would turn out though, with me in jail facing an assault charge.

I continued on to work and parked. Face in my hands I worked the tears out then wiped my eyes and went inside.

I've been trying to forget that for 9 years. No luck, so now I immortalize it.

If you people in the beater car ever read this, you'll know who you are. It'll take you a while to live that one down you filthy animals. I'll be happy to help you balance your account though.

Conan didn't read many books

So, as I mentioned earlier on this blog, I got a chance to go to Ranger School in late August of 2010. Ranger School is a 60 day school. Add two weeks to the front for National Guard guys like me to go through the mandatory Pre-Ranger training and you get two and a half months. Notice please that it is early September and, since I am writing this, I am clearly not in Ranger School.

I failed out. I do not feel bad about this. How and why make for a story that I won't be telling in this post but which culminates in my burning desire to go back and try again.

So why this digression on Ranger School? Because of the look.

9/11 2010

So this is the obligatory post. I have lots of thoughts on the events of this nine year old date and their aftermath, but I'm only going to cover one set today.

Sacrifice. Quite a few people today have talked about honoring the sacrifice of those who lost their lives on this day.

What exactly is a sacrifice? Dictionary.com says ... well, it has a lot of definitions, not all of which apply, but all of which involve some deliberate effort by those performing the sacrifice. Rushing up the stairs of a burning building to save who and what you can, knowing the risk, is a sacrifice. Crashing the plane you are on rather than letting it be used for further atrocity, that's a sacrifice. Even stepping up and attempting to impose order on the chaos of your co-workers in a crowded stairwell, giving up your place in the rush in order to stand on a bit of high ground and get things moving more smoothly, is a sacrifice. Showing up to work in one of the towers or even the pentagon was not. It was just bad luck. Calling it a sacrifice cheapens the concept and the efforts of those who did, and have been attempting to, actually do something about those events and their consequences.

So, in the interest of my peace of mind I've been busily assuming that all the people yammering about the sacrifice of those those who died on 9/11 are talking about those people who have lost their lives while doing something about those events. I'll save the honor I have to give for them, thank you.

Kick Ass

Kicked ass. Best movie I've seen in years. Jumped right to the top of my list of all time favorites, perhaps falling one position under Equilibrium, perhaps shouldering it to one side with a bit of truculence. We shall see how it bears more watchings. Already seen it three times, loved it more each and every one.

Determined to dress up for halloween this year as Hit Girl. My wife may not let me. But maybe I can get her into a purple wig? Would that be wrong?

Climate Gate. Wow.

Phil Jones of the CRU (Climatic Research Unit) said, when asked to share the data his organization had been collecting on historical temperatures of the Earth, "We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"

Maybe, Phil, because that's the entire bloody point of scientific work, to find something wrong with it. You, sir, if you were acting as a true scientist in this case, should have been eagerly lining up for someone to point out possible flaws in your data collection methods or conclusions thereon. For that is how scientific truth is discovered. Make a hypothesis, collect data, and then try and knock holes in it. When all the people who disagree with you can no longer find actual flaws in your data or conclusions, you've found something. But, I suppose, if you never look for those flaws you can cling to whatever hypothesis gets you more tax money.

That quote and the continued resistance to sharing the collected data says more about the group's scientific creds than anything else ever could.

Liberal Gun Nuts

So, I get this tweet from Eric James Stone (I and his other millions of fans) linking to a post written by someone he claimed to be a liberal making sense on the second amendment. On the Daily Kos no less.  Being as enamored of mythical beasts as well as jackalopes I clicked through for a looksee. ... He was right.

Not only did the guy make sense, he did it without simply invalidating all those things the liberals hold most dear in this one, oh so special, case in which he was called upon to make sense. Bravo sir. Bravo.

His larger point though, the car he was riding in if you will, was not so logical and it's where most of his power to be persuasive from a liberal point of view came from. He was saying, in that oh so self-righteous way we all know and love, that conservatives are about taking rights away from the people while liberals are about keeping rights in the people's hands.

This only works if you consider putting the control of any given right into the hands of the government to be keeping it in the hands of the people. I beg to differ. I already have the right to donate money to Maplethorpe, or, conversely, to NOT donate money to Maplethorpe. Funding the NEA with tax dollars actually takes that second right away.  I already have the right to donate money to the poor. Funding welfare projects with tax dollars takes that right away.  The principle is universal.

Putting 'rights' into the hands of the government to administer lessens the rights of the people in every case. In some cases we are losing the right to be a jerk. So what.  That is nevertheless a right you are actually taking away rather than leaving in my hands. I'll wager nearly all the arguments about what the government should and should not regulate hinge on one side considering a particular behavior to be jerky that the other doesn't. (mmm jerky)

That's the liberal position. The government should not allow people to be jerks, and the liberals get to decide what being a jerk IS. The conservative side of that argument (Largely, I'll not defend all things done in the name of conservatism) is to keep the government out of the matter as often as possible, thus leaving the rights in the hands of the people by default. The people who wrote the constitution were very careful to make it clear that the government had no powers other than what was specifically granted in that document for that very reason. Everything else was already inherently in the hands of the people and getting the government involved just screwed things up.

So, thank you Angry Mouse for making a cogent point from atop your tower of unassailable non-jerkiness.

If I hear of an article calling for the government to mandate that every household shall own and maintain a proficiency in the use of firearms I will point out that, once again, the author of that article has missed the point.

Russian spies not actually that smart!

The Justice Department said the suspects were supposed to have recruited intelligence agents but were not directly involved in obtaining U.S. secrets themselves. They were charged with acting as agents of a foreign government,...

Well, duh. I am astonished. In a country that lived through so many years of a cold war you'd think journalists would know that 'deep cover' spies act as handlers rather than Tom Cruise-esque villains. ' Not directly involved with obtaining



US secrets themselves' means they didn't put on nightvision goggles and a catsuit in order to penetrate secure facilities with a thumb drive.  Nobody actually does that. Spies look for

disaffected/disgruntled/moneystrapped citizens of the target nation who already have placement and access to sensitive information. Then they pay those people to put papers from their desk into a briefcase and drop it at a pre-arranged location. The 'drop' is just about the most glamorous bit of espionage activity that actually happens in the real world.

Now, at this point I must say I am not impressed with the tradecraft of anyone who puts '99 Fake street' when buying a drop phone. Sure, when it's your hundredth drop phone, I imagine one's creativity could become strained. But 'Fake street?'

It will be very interesting to see if any treason or espionage arrests come out of this busted spy ring. I hope none do. If you can level such charges and make them stick it's likely already cost some American asset his/her life. Hopefully we caught these folks before they could do

any real damage. And, on the other side of the coin, I hope they were actually spies and that the charges are not trumped up bits of fluff designed to spur political change of some sort.

Riverworld the made for TV movie

[caption id="attachment_80" align="alignleft" width="110" caption="I'm so so sorry."][/caption]

Sigh. Another dashed hope.

The Riverworld books by Philip Jose Farmer were very good. Classic Sci-Fi a little more on the cutting edge than most for their time. Cool characters, interesting and consistently imagined world, great fun.

Unfortunately, the made for TV movie produced in 2010 was none of these things. The dialog  was atrociously stilted. Painfully stupid event followed painfully stupid event. Just awful. I would blame the actors, but I can't imagine a good way to deliver most of the drivel they were forced to mouth. And there were quite a few who had done great work in the Battlestar Galactica reboot, so I know they were capable.

You can never magically put a book on screen. Changes have to be made. Why anyone would make some of the changes made by the people who put this show together is unfathomable though. Turn Burton into the villain of the piece at the outset? Really? Completely abandon the confusion, the 'figure out the world with the characters' portion of the story, the problem solving and making of friends, in favor of random undisguised infodumps? Set us in a world that doesn't make any sense, at all, why? Farmer's world made sense. I know it did because I read the books. It was internally consistent. No such claim can be made for the movie. And as far as I could tell, the changes were made either because they happened to have people in conquistador costumes hanging around at the set next door (and hey, waste not want not right?) or because it was too difficult to imagineer sets that actually worked with the story.

Ahhhg, so painful. It could have been soooo good and yet was so bad.

Lawsuits for dummies

Or BY dummies I suppose.

Woman asks google for directions from one place to another on her blackberry. Gets directions. Follows directions down a road with no sidewalks. Gets hit by a car. Sues google.

So many things wrong with this I find myself nearly mute, though I wish to comment. What. An. Idiot. And a selfish idiot at that. I suppose we could attribute a certain low cunning to the idiot in question. Google, after all, has deep pockets and may settle out of court.

Why is she an idiot? Several reasons. One, for getting hit by a car as a pedestrian. Not hard to avoid. Another, for thinking that the magic google-magic would keep her safe on a road she could plainly see didn't have sidewalks, and which she is now claiming was obviously unsafe. Obvious to everyone but her at time apparently. Yet one more, for behaving in a manner that would end society in a heartbeat if everyone followed suit. Really, idiot? You wish to live in a society where Google is responsible for YOUR actions? How about YOU be responsible for your OWN actions.

Oh and you, her friends who urged her to sue. You're stupid too.

Russel Crowe as Robin Hood.

Wow, such a wasted opportunity.

I went into this movie with high hopes that had been slightly dashed by Eric D. Snider's review. I actually find slightly worse for wear high hopes to be a good recipe for movie watching. It makes the slide into a comfortable watch, instead of a great one, easy and painless. Unfortunately, Robin Hood just kept on sliding.

*Major spoilers ahoy*

Once I reconciled myself to a slightly unglamorous telling of the tale I was wowed by the production values, and unlike Snider I found the twists and turns to be logical and the machinations believable, barely.  And then they got all feminist on us. Not sure who thought it would be a good idea for Maid Marian to show up for the final battle in full armor leading a band of naked orphans from the woods. (barely mentioned so far) It wasn't. Neither was it a good idea to have her lift her helm and declare across the battlefield "This is for Walter." (her murdered father-in-law) before heading off to engage the bad guy in swordplay. Cheese stacked on ridiculous does not make a good sandwich.

And for those naked orphans who turned into knife fighting ninjas taking out armored infantry? I do not thank you.

It got a little sillier when we cut to several different takes in a row of Robin carrying the armored Maid Marian in his arms, deeper into the ocean. What's out there besides retreating French? And any hope of a satisfying ending? Sigh.

It's been a few weeks.

This being a full time writer thing is very different from a 9 to 5 cubicle marathon.  I'm not making money writing yet. Won't for years. I think I've explained my situation before this.

But man, I love this. I spend more time working for myself: writing, editing, rewriting etc... than I ever did at my actual job. And it's great.

News on the Lurker project is good. Last night I writing-grouped the first two chapters generated from the outline Stet Canister gave me. And he liked them, as did most everyone. They were not perfect. There's always something wrong that the writing group catches, and they're good catches, but they liked the chapters. Woot.

The Music Man

So, I finished the first draft of my first novel today. I can't say it was my first book because I wrote that memoir about my year in Afghanistan. It was definitely my first novel though.

I'm surprised at how...not blown away I feel. I've known I was going to finish this one since I wrote the outline so long ago. I know I've got a lot of work to do on it still. Notes from writing group to implement, foreshadowing to insert, exposition to work in, characters to tweak and develop better, and so on...

So it's not really marked by any real change in my life or circumstances or even prospects. That, may, all come later.

But this is the day I finished it. The same day my wife woke me in the morning to tell me the van had been stolen from our garage and then laughed like a loon when I believed her for just that barest of instants before I realized what day it was. Tying the sprayhead on the kitchen sink in the on position evened that particular score. Slapstick I know, but hey, one does what one can.

I hope it's not a bad omen that today is that day.

Ok, getting fired was good.

I have to say, the timing was actually perfect. Thank you, Sonic Innovations.  I've got the time to finish my book, and get a huge start if not a completion on the collaboration that's in the works. I've got the time to get ready for Ranger School. This is the bomb.

It's still scary because I'm leaping headlong after the dream of being a writer, but hey, I'd be an idiot not to with all these opportunities staring me in the face.

Bullies are filth.

Thanks to stacylwhitman for linking to this: http://nyti.ms/aMbPXC

Interesting and tragic article reporting on the suicide of a bullied girl. Best line in the article:

“These indictments tell us that middle school and high school kids are not immune from criminal laws,” he said. “If they violate them in the course of bullying someone, they’ll be held accountable. We don’t need to create a new crime.”

Smart and tough.

Had my share of problems with bullies growing up. I have very little patience with those who practice that vile art. May they practice it in front of me often in the future.

The long road to Ranger School...

...has begun.

I've been sporadically working out for the past several months, going two or three weeks at a stretch usually, toying with things like P90X and long grueling ruck marches in the middle of the night, for lack of time elsewhen.

All that has changed now. My ATL is a fitness and nutrition guru with a vested interest in getting me into good shape. I might have to drag him out of the line of fire after all.  He's also a genuinely nice guy willing to put some effort into helping me out. You rock dude.

Today was the first day of the program he's designed/designing for me. Nothing too complicated but I definitely did some work today.

Oh, and I got fired today too. My company could no longer afford to employ me. They are outsourcing whatever the hell it was I did for them. I suspect it also has something to do with the fact that they know I'm due to deploy pretty soon. They've bent over so far backward to accomodate my military requirements to date that I can hardly blame them, though their timing stinks. For me. For them, it's pretty good.

Nice severance package at least. Gives me 2.5 months to grind out the end of my novel and get a massive start on the collaboration I'm doing with Brandon.

Bloody terrifying, choosing to finish writing projects instead of searching frantically for another 9-5er. I have faith that it will all work out in the end though. I've been handed some pretty incredible opportunities on the fiction front, I'd be a fool not to take them.

Public Service Ad

Absolutely incredible.

Some people write poetry, some people make TV ads.

The Hurt Locker, Again

So, I re-watched the first three quarters of this film last night.  I did this for two reasons.

First: It's up for an Oscar and people are both bitching about it and howling its praises to the moon.  I wanted to see how it bore a second watching and if the good things I remembered were actually that good and so forth. I didn't finish it.  Admittedly it was getting a little late, 11:30 or so but I was not, at all, sucked into the conflict. I knew how it ended and that was enough, I didn't need to see it again. It wasn't compelling a second time. Any conclusions I draw from this must, of course, be informed by how often I watch films more than once. It happens. I've seen quite a few films more than once and enjoyed them immensely: Soldier, Equilibrium, The Last Samurai, Gladiator, The Kingdom, the list goes on. Wasn't happening with The Hurt Locker.

I suppose my perspective is a little different from most folks though by no means unique. I've been in combat, in the Middle East. They got quite a few things right in the film. But when they got things wrong, they really got them wrong and I didn't care to see the ending again.

Which brings me to my Second reason for watching it twice. There's a scene where an insurgent, who is undoubtedly the guy who shot and tried to blow up the heroes, is lying bloody on the ground under the care of a US Army medic. The medic tells his Colonel that the insurgent has a survivable wound if he can be picked up in 15 minutes.  The Colonel tells the medic in his crazy voice, "He didn't make it." The Colonel then repeats the phrase, with a significant nod, to another soldier, not the medic, standing nearby. Then he walks away and the camera follows him.

My friends have cast some doubt on whether or not a gunshot rings out as the Colonel walks away. I watched the film a second time to find out for sure. It most definitely does.

The film makers tried very very hard to give the impression that an American soldier, under orders from his Colonel shot and killed -murdered- an unarmed and wounded enemy combatant. And they did it casually, in front of quite a few other soldiers, a crowd even, not one of whom raised an objection.  To that I say, screw you mister film-maker. That is complete crap and it betrays your underlying motives for making the film and your opinions of the American fighting man, both of which are wrong and nasty if not downright evil.

Such acts have happened, I'll not deny it. They don't happen like that. They don't happen easily. They don't happen casually. They don't happen without objection, especially in front of a medic or a crowd of soldiers. They don't happen without charges of murder being brought and prosecuted.

None of which, of course, will or should have the slightest bearing on whether the film wins a Best Picture Oscar. An Oscar isn't about political opinion or truth in film-making.  I don't think it merits the award as a work of art, but that's just me. Now, Jeremy Renner, he deserves an Oscar. I thought his performance was brilliant as were those of the rest of the cast, including the crazy Colonel.

It being hailed as the best Iraq war film ever made? Well, last I checked the field wasn't very deep yet. I suspect holding that opinion may have more to do with The Hurt Locker bearing out, subtly and well, the opinions about war and soldiers the mainstream media has been inculcating into the population for the last 60 years.

Test scheduled post

Business Becomes Government

Author and thinker Jerry Pournelle muses on some interesting topics today.

In a nutshell, business, if allowed to, will use government to restrict its competition, to secure its place in the market.  And as it does so it concentrates more and more economic power into the hands of fewer and fewer people. This, in turn, allows those powerful few to manipulate the political process in ways that give them more power. A corollary of that manipulation is the concentration of political power into the hands of those politicians who will bow to business, or, looked at another way, use the powerful business interests to collect and increase their own political power.

Things quickly devolve from that point into a struggle between the powerful few in business and the powerful few in government, both trying to increase said power. There's only so much of it to go around after all.

We're watching such a struggle take place right now, over healthcare. Something has gone wrong in the republic.

Normally, I'm all for business being left alone to do pretty much anything it wants as long as the government has the power to enforce a certain limited set of laws designed to prevent criminal abuse. And we already have those laws on the books: libel, homicide, negligent homicide, personal injury, theft, anti-trust, etc...

It's when business starts using the government to enforce its advantage that we have a problem. But then, at that point, the problem isn't really business anymore is it? It's become government again.

The answer always seems to be less government nowadays.

Of course, there is a point where less government becomes bad, as we slide toward anarchy. But we can deal with that when we get back into the same galaxy as that end of the sliding scale, hmmm?

Forewarning of the Chilean Earthquake

Unfortunately this is not the kind of early warning system you can put in place on any kind of official basis.

I'm pretty sure I'm related by marriage to President and Sister Laycock, serving as mission presidents in Chile.  They had an interesting experience prior to the earthquake there in 2010.

President Larry Laycock and his wife, Sister Lisa Laycock head the Santiago Chile East Mission and had spent the two weeks prior to the 8.8 earthquake visiting each missionary apartment and preparing them for an earthquake.

Article about it from Meridian Magazine here.

Kyrgyzstan Warm Babies

As I write this my wife and mother-in-law are bouncing up and down on garbage bags into which they have stuck the sucking end of a vacuum cleaner.

About a week and a half ago Kristina, my wife, received an email from a friend of ours, Cameo.  Cameo has a friend who is currently serving in the U.S. Air Force at an air base in Kyrgyzstan.  This friend has the opportunity to get outside the wire at least occasionally and he discovered that children in a nearby orphanage, as well as in the surrounding countryside, were actually succumbing to the cold, dying, for want of blankets and warm clothing. He put the word out through Cameo and others.

I remembered very well, from my own time in Afghanistan, watching in disbelief as the locals walked around the country-side in freezing weather, often through the snow, in nothing but a long shirt and flip-flops, if not barefoot. Kyrgyzstan is north of Afghanistan.

Kris put the word out through her contacts at our children's elementary and middle schools.  Thus was born Operation Warm Babies Kyrgyzstan. She's spent the last three mornings collecting a mountain of warm clothing donated by families dropping off and picking up their kids from school. At the same time she's selling cookies donated and baked by volunteers for cash.  This money will ship the donated clothing and blankets to the air base.

Astonishing.

FYI: The vacuum cleaner reduces the size of the trash bag filled with snivel gear to about a third the original size. At a later date I'll post exactly how many pounds of snivel gear was collected and shipped.

The Hurt Locker

The thrust of The Hurt Locker story is the character.  The team sergeant who is reckless and who goes back to the war again and again when he doesn't have to. That's compelling, it's a true character trait. I could relate. It let me examine things about myself and about soldiers in general that do need examining.

But while pursuing this central story, the writer tossed in either lie after lie, or mistake after mistake, that betrays a basic perception on his part that soldiers generally are casual murderers and liars. (Also that AK47s can hit accurately at more than 300 yards, EOD guys are all sniper qualified, EOD guys regularly run around the countryside completely alone and so forth.) He's in good company. Hollywood has been promulgating this line of propaganda since at least VietNam.

On the whole, I liked The Hurt Locker.  The good part of the story, the character arc, could easily have been told without the lies and/or mistakes though.

A tragedy

[caption id="attachment_31" align="alignright" width="195" caption="Drunk woman waving a sword"][/caption]

Seriously, we have advocated the use of swords in conflict resolution and personal defense for many years. We were finally making some progress. At long last the whole debate was making its way into the mainstream and getting the serious consideration it deserved.

Now, in one fell swoop, it's been reduced, again, to the status of a crazy drunk woman waving her sword in public and threatening to "cut" people.

I weep for what we have lost.

http://www.wlbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=12033987

Reagan on Compulsory Government Healthcare

Reagan on Compulsory Government Healthcare
Very impressive.
I've heard it argued that Reagan was talking about an early form of Medicare, which program has been implemented without all the terrible consequences he predicted coming to pass, you moron redneck conservative.
Well, no, actually. Reagan was talking about 'compulsory' or 'government mandated' health insurance. Medicare ain't that. The version he was talking about may have been, but that version did not get passed and we don't have it today. So stop throwing up straw men you whiny suet-filled pseudo-intellectual.
Of course, if ObamaCare passes, we will have it. The end of the world will soon follow.