Knicks picked up Taiwanese American guard Jeremy Lin today. In all likelihood, Lin will fill in for injured rookie guard Iman Shumpert for now and be released before the February 10 deadline for non-guaranteed contracts to become guaranteed for the remainder of the season.
1/6/12 update: Oof. On New Year's Eve, Lin played 4 minutes to end the game and was awful against the Sacramento Kings back-up rookie point guard, 2011 60th pick Isaiah Thomas. Lin looked rushed, struggled mightily bringing the ball up against Thomas's pressure, got picked, after which he couldn't get rid of the ball fast enough after crossing the half-court line, and couldn't defend Thomas on the other end. Lin hasn't played since the Kings game and now Shumpert is back.
Eric
Tuesday, 27 December 2011
Sunday, 25 December 2011
Cool website of the day: Who is that hot ad girl?
Ever wonder the name of an eye-catching yet non-celebrity girl featured in a television ad? If you have, this website might have your answer.
Eric
Eric
New York City says Happy Hannukah and Merry Christmas
As seen from my window and the street below my window, the Empire State Building displays Hannukah and Christmas colors on Christmas Day, 2011:
Eric
Eric
Thursday, 22 December 2011
Broadway show Anything Goes is racist
Yesterday, I caught the matinee performance of Anything Goes now playing at the Stephen Sondheim (formerly Henry Miller) theater. The Sondheim theater, refurbished and modernized in 2005, is a sleek, comfortable venue. The 2011 Tony Award-winning revival is a richly crafted production, and the leads and supporting cast delivered polished performances. Sutton Foster, playing Reno Sweeney, justified her reputation as a top Broadway star. Foster impressed as a musical theater actress at the top of her game with a demanding display of her acting, singing, and dancing triple-threat abilities.
And oh, by the way, Anything Goes is racist. Andrew Cao and Raymond J. Lee portray a pair of newly Christian-converted Chinese gamblers named "Luke" and "John" ("Ching" and "Ling" in the original 1934 production). Luke and John are early-20th-century Chinese caricatures with stereotyped garb, speech, and behavior, and serve as comic foils for the non-Asian main characters. In Luke and John's final scene, they are duped into giving their Chinese clothes to cellmates Moonface Martin and Billy Crocker, so they in turn can act out the final racist wedding scene. Raymond J. Lee's John, in particular, is a painful display of yellow face (our version of black face).
It's bad enough when non-Asians or non-American Asians perpetuate anti-Asian racism in American popular culture, but it's disgusting when our Asian American brothers and sisters actively participate in betraying their own. I don't understand how Raymond J. Lee can look himself in the mirror after his nightly betrayal of Asian men. Maybe he's paid a lot. Maybe Asian actors are grateful for any stage role, no matter how demeaning, that's set aside for Asian actors. Maybe Lee can't afford to turn down a job on a top Broadway show. Maybe Lee, who is Korean, rationalizes that he's insulting Chinese men every day rather than Korean men.
Eric
And oh, by the way, Anything Goes is racist. Andrew Cao and Raymond J. Lee portray a pair of newly Christian-converted Chinese gamblers named "Luke" and "John" ("Ching" and "Ling" in the original 1934 production). Luke and John are early-20th-century Chinese caricatures with stereotyped garb, speech, and behavior, and serve as comic foils for the non-Asian main characters. In Luke and John's final scene, they are duped into giving their Chinese clothes to cellmates Moonface Martin and Billy Crocker, so they in turn can act out the final racist wedding scene. Raymond J. Lee's John, in particular, is a painful display of yellow face (our version of black face).
It's bad enough when non-Asians or non-American Asians perpetuate anti-Asian racism in American popular culture, but it's disgusting when our Asian American brothers and sisters actively participate in betraying their own. I don't understand how Raymond J. Lee can look himself in the mirror after his nightly betrayal of Asian men. Maybe he's paid a lot. Maybe Asian actors are grateful for any stage role, no matter how demeaning, that's set aside for Asian actors. Maybe Lee can't afford to turn down a job on a top Broadway show. Maybe Lee, who is Korean, rationalizes that he's insulting Chinese men every day rather than Korean men.
Eric
Sunday, 18 December 2011
Kim Jong Il has died
Big news. His successor is his 20-something-year-old son, Kim Jong Un. I imagine every S2 in Korea is working on a brief right now.
Now what for north Korea?
A. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
B. north Korea seeks rapprochement and a soft landing with South Korea.
C. Something new that's characteristically aggressive of a 20-something-year-old dictator.
D. New leader loses control and north Korea implodes and collapses.
Eric
Now what for north Korea?
A. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
B. north Korea seeks rapprochement and a soft landing with South Korea.
C. Something new that's characteristically aggressive of a 20-something-year-old dictator.
D. New leader loses control and north Korea implodes and collapses.
Eric
Army Captain Travis Patriquin "remember the name"
CBS News's David Martin gives an American soldier his due: "The first glimmerings of the awakening can be traced to one American soldier. Army Capt. Travis Patriquin. Remember the name."
I read about CPT Patriquin and his famous Powerpoint presentation on the mil-blogs when he was killed. CPT Patriquin's friend (now) MAJ Chad Pillai wrote a tribute at Small Wars Journal. Another tribute by (now) LT David Pyle. I should check out this book about him.
Eric
I read about CPT Patriquin and his famous Powerpoint presentation on the mil-blogs when he was killed. CPT Patriquin's friend (now) MAJ Chad Pillai wrote a tribute at Small Wars Journal. Another tribute by (now) LT David Pyle. I should check out this book about him.
Eric
Friday, 16 December 2011
Friday, 9 December 2011
Modular concept of Columbia ROTC+
What will the new Columbia Navy ROTC program look like?
The agreement signed by Columbia President Lee Bollinger and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has not been released to the public. All our information about the form of the new Columbia NROTC program is from official accounts of the 26MAY11 signing ceremony:
The basic premise of the modular concept is that delegating the required NROTC training to SUNY Maritime allows the ROTC components on the Columbia campus to be customized to Columbia ROTC+. The modular concept builds on my suggestions for Columbia ROTC designers and builders. Also see Blueprint for Columbia ROTC.
The long-term goal is ROTC programs fully manifested on the Columbia campus. Establishing a complete ROTC program on campus is the practical way for the program to develop a Columbia identity, interact with the University community, and most importantly, build up Columbia ROTC student numbers. I had hoped the provisional Columbia NROTC program would use an extension model (training on campus - headquarters at SUNY Maritime) to maximize presence on campus and access for students. However, indications are pointing to a less visible, less accessible commuter model (office on campus - training at SUNY Maritime). My modular formulation of Columbia ROTC is based on the principle of making lemonade from lemons or, in this case, making the most out of a crosstown commuter arrangement with SUNY Maritime NROTC with an NROTC-staffed office on the Columbia campus. Under the circumstances, a unified hybrid Columbia ROTC+ program entirely located on the Columbia campus may not be realistic at start-up, whereas a loosely interlocking modular approach can reasonably be achieved with a crosstown commuter arrangement at start-up.
In the short term, the modular concept is actually helped by a physical separation between the Columbia campus and the NROTC foster-parent unit at SUNY Maritime. What's needed is just enough formal ROTC presence on campus to provide focus and direction, and stake out the ROTC space on campus, without defining or filling the ROTC space. We also need the NROTC officers at Columbia to be entrepeneurs willing to facilitate filling the ROTC space on campus with Columbia-defined programming or, at least, Columbia-modified NROTC programming.
The modular concept of Columbia ROTC+ has 3 parts:
Part 1 (off campus). Mandatory NROTC training. Ease the cross-campus demands on students for training at SUNY Maritime as much as possible; the more NROTC requirements students can fulfill at Columbia the better. The bulk of non-adjustable NROTC training will likely remain at SUNY Maritime. I suspect there isn't much tolerance for local experimentation in the mandated NROTC components because Columbia Naval and Marines officers must graduate with the same basic training as all Naval and Marines officers. In order to lessen the cross-campus burden on students, heighten ROTC presence on the Columbia campus, and persistently expose students to ROTC, I recommend replacing the non-mandatory NROTC programming at SUNY Maritime with ROTC+ programming on Columbia's campus.
Part 2 (on campus). Alexander Hamilton's Hearts of Oak. On my suggestions page, I suggest a user-driven creative laboratory space for Columbia ROTC students within the available space allowed by formal ROTC and school commitments. For science fiction fans, I analogized this lab space to Ender Wiggins's launchie practices in Battle School (see Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game). More aptly, the tradition I want to revive with CU ROTC+ is that of Alexander Hamilton and his King's College classmates taking ownership of their military development with Hearts of Oak, innovating their own approach to soldiering, and looking ahead by adopting the most sophisticated and strategic weapon of their day - the king of battle, artillery. While I trust French and Indian War veterans, such as George Washington, and European veterans polished his conventional soldiering skills once he joined the regular army (analogous to the required training at SUNY Maritime), Alexander Hamilton the Army officer was first formed as a self-actualizing Hearts of Oak man.
If we truly believe Columbia ROTC students have unparalleled potential and exceptional collective intelligence, then let's give them the lab space to create, experiment, and look ahead, by their own faculties. I want Columbia ROTC graduates to stand out as leaders who have taken ownership of their profession and rebel thinkers who have been innovating as Alexander Hamilton's intellectual heirs since they were students. When future geopolitical challenges catch other military leaders by surprise, Columbia ROTC graduates should be ready to give new answers for new questions.
Part 3 (on campus). ROTC+. We have barely explored the potential of mobilizing the 21st century Ivy League university to prepare officers for an era in which an agile versatile military is as important as a disciplined technically proficient military. Columbia also provides an ideal setting for students to explore the ethos of American military leadership. With the NROTC foster-parent unit headquartered on a remote campus, what innovative ROTC+ programming can Columbia professors develop for ROTC students under their own domain? Freed of the mandated ROTC curriculum, what ROTC+ programming can campus NROTC officers create collaboratively with Columbia professors? Academic course credit can be used as an objective standard for campus ROTC+ programming.
In the modular concept, campus NROTC officers provide just enough focus and direction to stake out ROTC space on campus, then facilitate Part 2 (Hearts of Oak) and Part 3 (ROTC+) filling and defining the ROTC space. A benefit of separating the NROTC foster-parent unit from the campus is that Columbia Army and Air Force cadets could then join with Columbia Navy midshipmen on campus in Columbia-defined Part 2 and Part 3, which the cadets could be dissuaded from doing if all ROTC activity on campus was contained within a formal NROTC program.
Secondary benefits:
4. Educating the campus. Columbia ROTC advocates have stressed the engagement and educational roles of ROTC. However, while conventional ROTC (as opposed to theoretical ROTC+) indeed has campus engagement and educational features, its primary mission is training, not reaching out to the campus community. I believe the combination of a structurally sufficient yet not overbearing formal ROTC presence on campus, Columbia ROTC student-driven experimentation, and professor-driven innovation can produce uniquely customized engagement and educational opportunities for the University community that are characterized by Columbia entities rather than the military.
5. Pipeline. The future of war and peace and global leadership for America is highly uncertain right now. We know, however, that the Columbia graduates serving in the Navy and Marines will be tasked to manage whatever geopolitical crises arise. Columbia's Army and Air Force officers will be on call, too. We should aim to produce the best mentally prepared officers, but even that may not be enough to manage unanticipated complex situations. If Part 2 and Part 3 become robust on campus, Columbia officers on the ground who are stumped and need solutions quickly will then have the option of reaching back to Columbia with real-world based "scenarios", either whole or in part depending on security need. Columbia ROTC students could then pool their intellects and team with interested professors, graduate-student officers, milvets, and even alumni to rapidly work on the scenarios and upload solutions to the Columbia officers anxiously waiting on the ground. Such a pipeline would boost the professional development of Columbia ROTC students, add value to ROTC+, strengthen the bonds of the Columbia military community, and assist Columbia officers in their real-world work.
As the Provost's NROTC advisory committee fleshes out the new program, it matters for Columbia ROTC advocates to have already envisioned what the Columbia NROTC program should look like. Once we have that picture in mind, we'll know how to advise the formation process. The proper direction is a steady increase of ROTC presence on campus with eventually full ROTC programs at Columbia. A full ROTC program on campus is preferable to an extension ROTC program on campus, and an extension ROTC program on campus is preferable to a crosstown commuter arrangement. Until Columbia acquires ROTC programs fully manifested on campus, I believe the modular concept of Columbia ROTC+ can work with a crosstown commuter arrangement.
Eric
The agreement signed by Columbia President Lee Bollinger and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has not been released to the public. All our information about the form of the new Columbia NROTC program is from official accounts of the 26MAY11 signing ceremony:
Under the agreement, first announced on April 21, the NROTC program will have an office on Columbia’s campus and active duty Navy and Marine Corps officers will meet with Columbia NROTC midshipmen during routinely scheduled office hours. Navy and Marine Corps-option midshipmen will participate in NROTC through a unit hosted at SUNY Maritime College in Throgs Neck, NY.Here are transcripts of President Bollinger's speech and Secretary Mabus's speech from the signing ceremony.
The basic premise of the modular concept is that delegating the required NROTC training to SUNY Maritime allows the ROTC components on the Columbia campus to be customized to Columbia ROTC+. The modular concept builds on my suggestions for Columbia ROTC designers and builders. Also see Blueprint for Columbia ROTC.
The long-term goal is ROTC programs fully manifested on the Columbia campus. Establishing a complete ROTC program on campus is the practical way for the program to develop a Columbia identity, interact with the University community, and most importantly, build up Columbia ROTC student numbers. I had hoped the provisional Columbia NROTC program would use an extension model (training on campus - headquarters at SUNY Maritime) to maximize presence on campus and access for students. However, indications are pointing to a less visible, less accessible commuter model (office on campus - training at SUNY Maritime). My modular formulation of Columbia ROTC is based on the principle of making lemonade from lemons or, in this case, making the most out of a crosstown commuter arrangement with SUNY Maritime NROTC with an NROTC-staffed office on the Columbia campus. Under the circumstances, a unified hybrid Columbia ROTC+ program entirely located on the Columbia campus may not be realistic at start-up, whereas a loosely interlocking modular approach can reasonably be achieved with a crosstown commuter arrangement at start-up.
In the short term, the modular concept is actually helped by a physical separation between the Columbia campus and the NROTC foster-parent unit at SUNY Maritime. What's needed is just enough formal ROTC presence on campus to provide focus and direction, and stake out the ROTC space on campus, without defining or filling the ROTC space. We also need the NROTC officers at Columbia to be entrepeneurs willing to facilitate filling the ROTC space on campus with Columbia-defined programming or, at least, Columbia-modified NROTC programming.
The modular concept of Columbia ROTC+ has 3 parts:
Part 1 (off campus). Mandatory NROTC training. Ease the cross-campus demands on students for training at SUNY Maritime as much as possible; the more NROTC requirements students can fulfill at Columbia the better. The bulk of non-adjustable NROTC training will likely remain at SUNY Maritime. I suspect there isn't much tolerance for local experimentation in the mandated NROTC components because Columbia Naval and Marines officers must graduate with the same basic training as all Naval and Marines officers. In order to lessen the cross-campus burden on students, heighten ROTC presence on the Columbia campus, and persistently expose students to ROTC, I recommend replacing the non-mandatory NROTC programming at SUNY Maritime with ROTC+ programming on Columbia's campus.
Part 2 (on campus). Alexander Hamilton's Hearts of Oak. On my suggestions page, I suggest a user-driven creative laboratory space for Columbia ROTC students within the available space allowed by formal ROTC and school commitments. For science fiction fans, I analogized this lab space to Ender Wiggins's launchie practices in Battle School (see Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game). More aptly, the tradition I want to revive with CU ROTC+ is that of Alexander Hamilton and his King's College classmates taking ownership of their military development with Hearts of Oak, innovating their own approach to soldiering, and looking ahead by adopting the most sophisticated and strategic weapon of their day - the king of battle, artillery. While I trust French and Indian War veterans, such as George Washington, and European veterans polished his conventional soldiering skills once he joined the regular army (analogous to the required training at SUNY Maritime), Alexander Hamilton the Army officer was first formed as a self-actualizing Hearts of Oak man.
If we truly believe Columbia ROTC students have unparalleled potential and exceptional collective intelligence, then let's give them the lab space to create, experiment, and look ahead, by their own faculties. I want Columbia ROTC graduates to stand out as leaders who have taken ownership of their profession and rebel thinkers who have been innovating as Alexander Hamilton's intellectual heirs since they were students. When future geopolitical challenges catch other military leaders by surprise, Columbia ROTC graduates should be ready to give new answers for new questions.
Part 3 (on campus). ROTC+. We have barely explored the potential of mobilizing the 21st century Ivy League university to prepare officers for an era in which an agile versatile military is as important as a disciplined technically proficient military. Columbia also provides an ideal setting for students to explore the ethos of American military leadership. With the NROTC foster-parent unit headquartered on a remote campus, what innovative ROTC+ programming can Columbia professors develop for ROTC students under their own domain? Freed of the mandated ROTC curriculum, what ROTC+ programming can campus NROTC officers create collaboratively with Columbia professors? Academic course credit can be used as an objective standard for campus ROTC+ programming.
In the modular concept, campus NROTC officers provide just enough focus and direction to stake out ROTC space on campus, then facilitate Part 2 (Hearts of Oak) and Part 3 (ROTC+) filling and defining the ROTC space. A benefit of separating the NROTC foster-parent unit from the campus is that Columbia Army and Air Force cadets could then join with Columbia Navy midshipmen on campus in Columbia-defined Part 2 and Part 3, which the cadets could be dissuaded from doing if all ROTC activity on campus was contained within a formal NROTC program.
Secondary benefits:
4. Educating the campus. Columbia ROTC advocates have stressed the engagement and educational roles of ROTC. However, while conventional ROTC (as opposed to theoretical ROTC+) indeed has campus engagement and educational features, its primary mission is training, not reaching out to the campus community. I believe the combination of a structurally sufficient yet not overbearing formal ROTC presence on campus, Columbia ROTC student-driven experimentation, and professor-driven innovation can produce uniquely customized engagement and educational opportunities for the University community that are characterized by Columbia entities rather than the military.
5. Pipeline. The future of war and peace and global leadership for America is highly uncertain right now. We know, however, that the Columbia graduates serving in the Navy and Marines will be tasked to manage whatever geopolitical crises arise. Columbia's Army and Air Force officers will be on call, too. We should aim to produce the best mentally prepared officers, but even that may not be enough to manage unanticipated complex situations. If Part 2 and Part 3 become robust on campus, Columbia officers on the ground who are stumped and need solutions quickly will then have the option of reaching back to Columbia with real-world based "scenarios", either whole or in part depending on security need. Columbia ROTC students could then pool their intellects and team with interested professors, graduate-student officers, milvets, and even alumni to rapidly work on the scenarios and upload solutions to the Columbia officers anxiously waiting on the ground. Such a pipeline would boost the professional development of Columbia ROTC students, add value to ROTC+, strengthen the bonds of the Columbia military community, and assist Columbia officers in their real-world work.
As the Provost's NROTC advisory committee fleshes out the new program, it matters for Columbia ROTC advocates to have already envisioned what the Columbia NROTC program should look like. Once we have that picture in mind, we'll know how to advise the formation process. The proper direction is a steady increase of ROTC presence on campus with eventually full ROTC programs at Columbia. A full ROTC program on campus is preferable to an extension ROTC program on campus, and an extension ROTC program on campus is preferable to a crosstown commuter arrangement. Until Columbia acquires ROTC programs fully manifested on campus, I believe the modular concept of Columbia ROTC+ can work with a crosstown commuter arrangement.
Eric
Thursday, 8 December 2011
Cool website of the day: reddit
Reddit looks like a working, infinitely expandable, high traffic, no frills, user driven, content based, on-line community - a revolution in communication, as I say on my blog description.
Eric
Eric
Monday, 5 December 2011
Thoughts of the day
I really need to be studying for finals, but the closer I get to my JD, the less certain I am that I want to be a practicing attorney. Some parts of the profession appeal to me. Other parts of it very much turn me off.
I often tack stray thoughts of the day onto my last Thoughts of the day post, which in this case was in June. When I found myself tacking four thoughts today onto a June post, I figured it was time to start a new Thoughts of the day. My last post about zombie dreams and black swans could have been included in this post, but since that post began life as a free-standing post about Wretchard's comments about Nassim Taleeb's recent CFR article, I kept it as its own post. I should think about signing on to Twitter seeing as these accreting thoughts of the day posts are basically a poor man's twitter feed.
I'm featured in a 2-part Spec article (here and here) on the MilVets origin story. There are several factual detail inaccuracies, which I may correct someday on my blog, but the gist of the story is right.
Summary of what I was as a CU student activist: visionary, activist, recruiter, planner, organizer, operations chief, communicator, facilitator, writer. Guided by intuition. Ideas from inspiration. My DNA was in the movement and my fingerprints were on it. Conflict resolver when I wasn't a party to the conflict. Self-conscious leader. Capable administrator. Averse to bureaucracy. Ambivalent socializer. Weak politician.
Game on: The Columbia Provost's NROTC implementation committee has formally begun its work. My blueprint for Columbia ROTC, with much of its content taken from the Harvard ROTC blueprint, has stood up well since its writing. I hope it's useful for the program designers. I'm considering putting up my suggestions and modular approach on SN, too.
Observation about declining Italian demographics applies to CU ROTC student headcount, too: The Catholic Church asserts, Bagnasco said, that “demographic balance is not only necessary for the physical survival of a community – which without children has no future – but is also a condition for that alliance between generations that is essential for a normal democratic dialectic.”
Popular Mechanics (link from reddit) describes the "error chain" of the 2009 Air France 447 crash as mostly due to extreme pilot error. A crew of highly trained professional pilots flying a functioning state-of-the-art Airbus330 in moderately challenging but ordinary circumstances disintegrated into psychological chaos and made baffling errors that resulted in 228 deaths. It's astonishing that basic human panic overwhelmed the most advanced systemic and technological safeguards to crash that plane. More from the author about the psychology of the doomed pilots, particularly Pierre-Cédric Bonin. On last night's Top Chef: Texas, experienced professional chef Whitney Otawka was eliminated for serving undercooked, even raw, potato gratin to the judges, a surprisingly elementary cooking error. In a TV Guide interview today, Otawka gave some telling insights about her state of mind: You know when you're in those situations under so much pressure that your brain doesn't think linearly? [Laughs] My thought process was off. . . . You have to imagine that you're not in your own kitchen, so you're totally not acclimated to everything around you. And then there are 13 of us running into each other. There's so much stress that it carries over into how you're cooking and I go back to that non-linear thought process. Your brain is just bouncing around in a million directions. You look back and you're like, "Oh my gosh! What was I doing?" It takes an exceptional mind to immediately master chaos and make correct decisions when a situation has gone off pattern, alien or unexpected inputs are bombarding the senses, and instant decisions are required with serious consequences. A normal response is panicked brain freeze. These accounts make me feel a little better about my choke job in the Baker final that possibly cost my team the win, but it's no less disconcerting that experienced, respected, skilled professionals also make disastrous mistakes under stress.
American Horror Story is captivatingly good in its 1st season. Showrunner Ryan Murphy, however, has a history of new shows that grab and excite audiences by pushing the envelope with richly crafted, aggressively imaginative stories but then lose their way in their 2nd seasons. See Glee and Nip/Tuck, and think of a souffle made with the best ingredients that puffs up impressively, then collapses. Supposedly, American Horror Story will try to solve the 1-season-hit problem by starting over with a new cast and storyline in Season 2. Freeze Season 1 at its peak of ripeness and begin a new journey. If that's true, 1 year blocks are an innovative, not inelegant, and self-aware compromise by someone who understands the sustainable limits of his process but seeks to preserve the special strengths of his creative bursts. 1/2/2012 add: Entertainment Weekly Popwatch offers solid 'post-mortem' thoughts and information.
MTV's Beavis and Butthead is must-watch stuff, smart, sarcastic, and bitingly incisive. It would have been cool to have watched the show in its first go-around. Interesting how Mike Judge's other famous show, King of the Hill, is so different in tone from Beavis and Butthead.
Look beyond positions. Look at interests, leverage, and incentives.
Zenpundit posts some interesting thoughts on strategic thinking.
Having the power to open Pandora's box doesn't always mean you have the power to close it. But you can quit and leave the mess for others.
Dick Proenneke of the awe-inspiring Alone in the Wilderness films was The Man.
New Red Sox and ex-Mets manager Bobby Valentine reminds me of me.
Interesting observational "slashes" by a conservative Finnish blogger, translated.
Good point about irony and detachment becoming valued over sincerity and conviction in popular culture.
Nice guys do finish last. But I knew that already.
Oh boy. I've done this.
True: "A friendly, non-shit testing 7 with a slender figure is like the holy grail to 70% of the world’s men."
Interesting blog by a pro-feminine (not pro-feminist) wife who takes issue with The Surrendered Wife, which she says goes too far in the opposite extreme from militant feminism.
Another criticique of feminist teachings: The Cost of Delaying Marriage.
Play Shaggy's It Wasn't Me as a backdrop while reading these depressing caught-my-SO-cheating testimonials on Reddit.
Project Runway designer babes: Season 3's Alison Kelly, Season 5's Kenley Collins (returning in the 2012 "all-star" season). In their seasons, Alison was sweet and Kenley was brassy.
Antoni Gramcsi is credited with a compelling poli sci theory.
Eric
I often tack stray thoughts of the day onto my last Thoughts of the day post, which in this case was in June. When I found myself tacking four thoughts today onto a June post, I figured it was time to start a new Thoughts of the day. My last post about zombie dreams and black swans could have been included in this post, but since that post began life as a free-standing post about Wretchard's comments about Nassim Taleeb's recent CFR article, I kept it as its own post. I should think about signing on to Twitter seeing as these accreting thoughts of the day posts are basically a poor man's twitter feed.
I'm featured in a 2-part Spec article (here and here) on the MilVets origin story. There are several factual detail inaccuracies, which I may correct someday on my blog, but the gist of the story is right.
Summary of what I was as a CU student activist: visionary, activist, recruiter, planner, organizer, operations chief, communicator, facilitator, writer. Guided by intuition. Ideas from inspiration. My DNA was in the movement and my fingerprints were on it. Conflict resolver when I wasn't a party to the conflict. Self-conscious leader. Capable administrator. Averse to bureaucracy. Ambivalent socializer. Weak politician.
Game on: The Columbia Provost's NROTC implementation committee has formally begun its work. My blueprint for Columbia ROTC, with much of its content taken from the Harvard ROTC blueprint, has stood up well since its writing. I hope it's useful for the program designers. I'm considering putting up my suggestions and modular approach on SN, too.
Observation about declining Italian demographics applies to CU ROTC student headcount, too: The Catholic Church asserts, Bagnasco said, that “demographic balance is not only necessary for the physical survival of a community – which without children has no future – but is also a condition for that alliance between generations that is essential for a normal democratic dialectic.”
Popular Mechanics (link from reddit) describes the "error chain" of the 2009 Air France 447 crash as mostly due to extreme pilot error. A crew of highly trained professional pilots flying a functioning state-of-the-art Airbus330 in moderately challenging but ordinary circumstances disintegrated into psychological chaos and made baffling errors that resulted in 228 deaths. It's astonishing that basic human panic overwhelmed the most advanced systemic and technological safeguards to crash that plane. More from the author about the psychology of the doomed pilots, particularly Pierre-Cédric Bonin. On last night's Top Chef: Texas, experienced professional chef Whitney Otawka was eliminated for serving undercooked, even raw, potato gratin to the judges, a surprisingly elementary cooking error. In a TV Guide interview today, Otawka gave some telling insights about her state of mind: You know when you're in those situations under so much pressure that your brain doesn't think linearly? [Laughs] My thought process was off. . . . You have to imagine that you're not in your own kitchen, so you're totally not acclimated to everything around you. And then there are 13 of us running into each other. There's so much stress that it carries over into how you're cooking and I go back to that non-linear thought process. Your brain is just bouncing around in a million directions. You look back and you're like, "Oh my gosh! What was I doing?" It takes an exceptional mind to immediately master chaos and make correct decisions when a situation has gone off pattern, alien or unexpected inputs are bombarding the senses, and instant decisions are required with serious consequences. A normal response is panicked brain freeze. These accounts make me feel a little better about my choke job in the Baker final that possibly cost my team the win, but it's no less disconcerting that experienced, respected, skilled professionals also make disastrous mistakes under stress.
American Horror Story is captivatingly good in its 1st season. Showrunner Ryan Murphy, however, has a history of new shows that grab and excite audiences by pushing the envelope with richly crafted, aggressively imaginative stories but then lose their way in their 2nd seasons. See Glee and Nip/Tuck, and think of a souffle made with the best ingredients that puffs up impressively, then collapses. Supposedly, American Horror Story will try to solve the 1-season-hit problem by starting over with a new cast and storyline in Season 2. Freeze Season 1 at its peak of ripeness and begin a new journey. If that's true, 1 year blocks are an innovative, not inelegant, and self-aware compromise by someone who understands the sustainable limits of his process but seeks to preserve the special strengths of his creative bursts. 1/2/2012 add: Entertainment Weekly Popwatch offers solid 'post-mortem' thoughts and information.
MTV's Beavis and Butthead is must-watch stuff, smart, sarcastic, and bitingly incisive. It would have been cool to have watched the show in its first go-around. Interesting how Mike Judge's other famous show, King of the Hill, is so different in tone from Beavis and Butthead.
Look beyond positions. Look at interests, leverage, and incentives.
Zenpundit posts some interesting thoughts on strategic thinking.
Having the power to open Pandora's box doesn't always mean you have the power to close it. But you can quit and leave the mess for others.
Dick Proenneke of the awe-inspiring Alone in the Wilderness films was The Man.
New Red Sox and ex-Mets manager Bobby Valentine reminds me of me.
Interesting observational "slashes" by a conservative Finnish blogger, translated.
Good point about irony and detachment becoming valued over sincerity and conviction in popular culture.
Nice guys do finish last. But I knew that already.
Oh boy. I've done this.
True: "A friendly, non-shit testing 7 with a slender figure is like the holy grail to 70% of the world’s men."
Interesting blog by a pro-feminine (not pro-feminist) wife who takes issue with The Surrendered Wife, which she says goes too far in the opposite extreme from militant feminism.
Another criticique of feminist teachings: The Cost of Delaying Marriage.
Play Shaggy's It Wasn't Me as a backdrop while reading these depressing caught-my-SO-cheating testimonials on Reddit.
Project Runway designer babes: Season 3's Alison Kelly, Season 5's Kenley Collins (returning in the 2012 "all-star" season). In their seasons, Alison was sweet and Kenley was brassy.
Antoni Gramcsi is credited with a compelling poli sci theory.
Eric
Zombies and black swans
I have vivid dreams when I'm anxious and depressed. It's like my brain uses dreams to burn up whatever excessive neuro-chemicals are producing - or are a product of - my anxiety and depression. Almost all my dreams are dramatic stories that relate to whatever is triggering my anxiety. I very rarely have frightening dreams. But occasionally, I have scary nightmares with a particular theme: being closely chased by zombies.
I want a "comfy and cosy" life where I can assume comfort, familiarity, certainty, stability, and security. I avoid conflict. I dislike change. I can deal with a boring life. At minimum, I need somewhere to hide, a cave where I can escape the world. I believe the zombie nightmares express my fear of my safe world stripped away and replaced by a dangerous existence with no safe zone and nowhere to hide, where I'm targeted and chased by angry things actively seeking to harm me, and my only choices are fight or flight.
Last night, I dreamt about a zombie apocalypse. I tried to hide from the growing danger in an apartment by closing the shades and hoping to be overlooked. I didn't know how long I could hold out because I wasn't supplied - the apartment was not a fortified self-sufficient castle. I thought I could at least be safe for the moment. However, the emergency response authorities opened the shades and revealed me to the zombies before the authorities lost control of the situation. The zombies easily broke into the apartment and I was forced to run.
I may be particularly sensitive and anxious, but I'm not unique in my wants and fears. Increasing centralization and government regulation have been human reactions intended to assure constituencies that the risks and uncertainties of the world have been minimized. That's fine if they work. According to an interesting Belmont Club post commenting on CFR article The Black Swan of Cairo, however, our national sense of security is actually a thin fragile veneer on the breaking point. The sweeping centralized social measures of the 20th century have actually increased the threat by making false promises of security, increased fragility by displacing granular resilience, and hidden growing threats until they explode. Upcoming book America 3.0 also speaks about the failure of America 2.0's 20th century institutions and advocates for a technologically networked decentralized 21st century society more reminiscent of America 1.0 to replace them.
If zombies are the stuff of my sleeping nightmares, then black swans scare me while I'm awake.
Eric
I want a "comfy and cosy" life where I can assume comfort, familiarity, certainty, stability, and security. I avoid conflict. I dislike change. I can deal with a boring life. At minimum, I need somewhere to hide, a cave where I can escape the world. I believe the zombie nightmares express my fear of my safe world stripped away and replaced by a dangerous existence with no safe zone and nowhere to hide, where I'm targeted and chased by angry things actively seeking to harm me, and my only choices are fight or flight.
Last night, I dreamt about a zombie apocalypse. I tried to hide from the growing danger in an apartment by closing the shades and hoping to be overlooked. I didn't know how long I could hold out because I wasn't supplied - the apartment was not a fortified self-sufficient castle. I thought I could at least be safe for the moment. However, the emergency response authorities opened the shades and revealed me to the zombies before the authorities lost control of the situation. The zombies easily broke into the apartment and I was forced to run.
I may be particularly sensitive and anxious, but I'm not unique in my wants and fears. Increasing centralization and government regulation have been human reactions intended to assure constituencies that the risks and uncertainties of the world have been minimized. That's fine if they work. According to an interesting Belmont Club post commenting on CFR article The Black Swan of Cairo, however, our national sense of security is actually a thin fragile veneer on the breaking point. The sweeping centralized social measures of the 20th century have actually increased the threat by making false promises of security, increased fragility by displacing granular resilience, and hidden growing threats until they explode. Upcoming book America 3.0 also speaks about the failure of America 2.0's 20th century institutions and advocates for a technologically networked decentralized 21st century society more reminiscent of America 1.0 to replace them.
If zombies are the stuff of my sleeping nightmares, then black swans scare me while I'm awake.
Eric
Saturday, 26 November 2011
Dutch General Peter van Uhm on warriors for peace
At TEDxAmsterdam on November 25, 2011, General Peter van Uhm, the Chief of Defence The Netherlands, spoke about guns as instruments of peace in the hands of Western soldiers.
His son Dennis, a Dutch lieutenant, was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2008.
CWCID: link from Neptunus Lex.
Eric
His son Dennis, a Dutch lieutenant, was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2008.
CWCID: link from Neptunus Lex.
Eric
Friday, 25 November 2011
A boy named Eric
The title is a riff on the classic cartoon, A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown is an all-time beloved comic strip character, a decent but anxious boy who is considered by his peers to be an affable loser. He unexpectedly volunteers for the class spelling bee and surprises everyone by winning, then surprises them again by winning the school spelling bee. Charlie Brown is satisfied with his achievement and basking in his peers' praise, but then discovers to his growing dismay that he has qualified for the national spelling bee and its heightened expectations. The further Charlie Brown advances in the spelling bee, the more his hopes for himself grow, but so do his fears of letting everyone down and making a fool of himself on the biggest stage. Will Charlie Brown rise in the moment or will he crumble under the pressure? [Spoiler: He makes it to the final two, then chokes on "beagle".]
"It's Sydney or the bush for Charlie Brown." I know how he feels.
Eric
"It's Sydney or the bush for Charlie Brown." I know how he feels.
Eric
Thursday, 10 November 2011
Mike McQueary failed test of manhood
Mike McQueary, now the wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator for the Penn State football team, is the unnamed graduate assistant in the "Victim 2" part of the Grand Jury presentment of the Jerry Sandusky case. McQueary was 28 years old in 2001 when, planning only to pick up some recruiting tapes and place a pair of shoes in his locker in the Lasch football building on a quiet March night, he stumbled upon retired coach Jerry Sandusky raping a boy in the shower room. How did the surprised McQueary react? The Grand Jury presentment is damning:
McQueary called his father, John, after he ran from the shower room. His father told him to leave the athletic facility and go home. The father is damned, too, if his son still had time to intervene, but the presentment doesn't provide a timeline. It's possible McQueary's chance to make a difference was lost by the time he called his father. Even assuming the opportunity to intervene was lost, it's nonetheless chilling that neither father nor son chose to call the police. Mike and John McQueary waited until the following day to act, and only then to talk to Joe Paterno.
Craven. Pathetic. Disgusting.
I can't be self-righteous about McQueary's failure because I've also failed the test of manhood. In my case, the test was a gang-up bullying of a classmate by classmates in a classroom on a day the teacher was absent. It started off as light teasing but it became something darker. I stayed in my seat and put my head down because I felt too weak to stand up to the bullies and was afraid I would become grouped with the victim if I intervened. To my continuing shame, I acted like a scared, self-preserving prey animal that day rather than a man. The bullying was finally stopped by a classmate who left the room to summon a teacher. Poignantly, the classmate who did something was socially awkward and disrespected, yet he was the only one of us who acted on the spot and in the moment. He proved himself to be a better man than I.
What does it mean to be a man? I define manhood by the Army values: Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, Personal Courage. Mike McQueary failed at least five of the values when he abandoned the boy to Sandusky's rape. With my fearful decision to go along to get along, I failed all seven values. Would I have taken a personal risk if I had tried to stop the bullying? Yes. Would McQueary have taken a personal risk if he had tried to stop the rape? Yes. In the real world, men suffer to earn their honor. The essence of manhood is the challenge to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong.
All that said, I am confident I would have reacted differently than McQueary. There is a limit to the stopping power of insecurity when a 10-year-old child is being raped in front of you. I can only wish for McQueary what I hope for myself: a chance for redemption, the awareness to recognize the test, and the character to pass it as an honorable man. Mike McQueary just has a much higher bar for redemption than I do.
Of course, the whole Sandusky controversy reaches beyond McQueary's failure of manhood on the spot and in the moment. The Penn State leaders who declined to notify law enforcement in 2001 may have protected Sandusky despite knowing of the 1998 criminal investigation and possibly other incidents. (Read this detailed summary.) After the 2001 incident, leaders at Penn State, including McQueary as he progressed from graduate assistant to assistant coach, and possibly The Second Mile apparently stood passive despite knowing Sandusky continued to interact with young boys. If Penn State leaders in 2001 responded to McQueary's eyewitness report in the context of past incidents, then they may have felt compelled to cover up past cover-ups as much as the new crime, reminiscent of traitors who are blackmailed into deeper espionage than they first intended. Jerry Sandusky founded The Second Mile in 1977, coached at Penn State until 1999, and stayed affiliated with the university until he was arrested last week . . . how much has he done that was covered up by university leaders?
Joe Paterno's motto was "Success with Honor" and the public believed he led Penn State football, indeed the university, virtuously. I have in mind a future post about the spectacular disillusionments of the last few years and the higher standard of responsibility versus accountability.
Eric
He saw a naked boy, Victim 2, whose age he estimated to be ten years old, with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Sandusky. The graduate assistant was shocked but noticed that both Victim 2 and Sandusky saw him. The graduate assistant left immediately, distraught.Mike McQueary was instantly challenged to be an honorable man and stop the rape. He reacted as a selfish coward and fled, instead. What did the child victim feel when he watched a grown man abandon him to rape rather than try to save him?
McQueary called his father, John, after he ran from the shower room. His father told him to leave the athletic facility and go home. The father is damned, too, if his son still had time to intervene, but the presentment doesn't provide a timeline. It's possible McQueary's chance to make a difference was lost by the time he called his father. Even assuming the opportunity to intervene was lost, it's nonetheless chilling that neither father nor son chose to call the police. Mike and John McQueary waited until the following day to act, and only then to talk to Joe Paterno.
Craven. Pathetic. Disgusting.
I can't be self-righteous about McQueary's failure because I've also failed the test of manhood. In my case, the test was a gang-up bullying of a classmate by classmates in a classroom on a day the teacher was absent. It started off as light teasing but it became something darker. I stayed in my seat and put my head down because I felt too weak to stand up to the bullies and was afraid I would become grouped with the victim if I intervened. To my continuing shame, I acted like a scared, self-preserving prey animal that day rather than a man. The bullying was finally stopped by a classmate who left the room to summon a teacher. Poignantly, the classmate who did something was socially awkward and disrespected, yet he was the only one of us who acted on the spot and in the moment. He proved himself to be a better man than I.
What does it mean to be a man? I define manhood by the Army values: Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, Personal Courage. Mike McQueary failed at least five of the values when he abandoned the boy to Sandusky's rape. With my fearful decision to go along to get along, I failed all seven values. Would I have taken a personal risk if I had tried to stop the bullying? Yes. Would McQueary have taken a personal risk if he had tried to stop the rape? Yes. In the real world, men suffer to earn their honor. The essence of manhood is the challenge to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong.
All that said, I am confident I would have reacted differently than McQueary. There is a limit to the stopping power of insecurity when a 10-year-old child is being raped in front of you. I can only wish for McQueary what I hope for myself: a chance for redemption, the awareness to recognize the test, and the character to pass it as an honorable man. Mike McQueary just has a much higher bar for redemption than I do.
Of course, the whole Sandusky controversy reaches beyond McQueary's failure of manhood on the spot and in the moment. The Penn State leaders who declined to notify law enforcement in 2001 may have protected Sandusky despite knowing of the 1998 criminal investigation and possibly other incidents. (Read this detailed summary.) After the 2001 incident, leaders at Penn State, including McQueary as he progressed from graduate assistant to assistant coach, and possibly The Second Mile apparently stood passive despite knowing Sandusky continued to interact with young boys. If Penn State leaders in 2001 responded to McQueary's eyewitness report in the context of past incidents, then they may have felt compelled to cover up past cover-ups as much as the new crime, reminiscent of traitors who are blackmailed into deeper espionage than they first intended. Jerry Sandusky founded The Second Mile in 1977, coached at Penn State until 1999, and stayed affiliated with the university until he was arrested last week . . . how much has he done that was covered up by university leaders?
Joe Paterno's motto was "Success with Honor" and the public believed he led Penn State football, indeed the university, virtuously. I have in mind a future post about the spectacular disillusionments of the last few years and the higher standard of responsibility versus accountability.
Eric
Wednesday, 12 October 2011
Today's readings: Jobs council report, All the single ladies
The President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness's interim report: Taking Action, Building Confidence.
All the Single Ladies by Kate Bolick and a follow-up e-mail interview with the author.
Eric
All the Single Ladies by Kate Bolick and a follow-up e-mail interview with the author.
Eric
Sunday, 9 October 2011
Occupy Wall Street
I went down and checked it out. It's your basic, as Eric Cartman would call it, hippie jam fest. The people involved and disparate, even contradictory, lefty demands represented look like the composite radical protests I witnessed during college. The only prescriptive position I found belonged to a couple who called themselves socialists but whose views were mostly libertarian, though granted, I didn't stay to listen to every soapbox speech.
Common views at the protest: Wealth redistribution is good (whether through big estate tax or uncovering the corporations' secret trillions), President Obama is reviled as an exposed Manchurian candidate corporate stooge, and the belief that big money (400 richest families and corporations!) and big government are closely allied in advancing plutocracy against the populist interest. Anti-corporate is a common label at the protest but different protestors define the label differently. On one end, some are calling for campaign finance reform and barring corporations from political campaign funding, very much in line with the opposing view in the Citizens United case. On the other end, there are ideological calls for an end to capitalism, destruction of the current political economic system, and radically redistributive class warfare (99% overthrow of the 1%). I don't agree with many of the various views at the protest, but I have some common ground with a few of the more reasonable protests. I agree with the critique of nominally American but actually global corporations that their primary loyalty, indeed their legally mandated fiduciary duty, is not to America and Americans, but to their own corporate profits. which may be maximized by investing and employing outside of the US. I also am concerned that legal personhood has been extended too far for corporations, which was a commercial legal concept that imbued a specific business model with a specific legal character and rights in order to serve a specific risk-mitigating business purpose, not to actually become a fully endowed legal person. Generally, I agree that a critical reassessment needs to take place of our relative global economic standing, and our system and assumptions. Perhaps most troubling is the dire job market for the college educated, many of whom committed their youthful prime and took the risk of non-dischargeable student loan debt based on the promise that higher education was the path to financial security. That promise has been broken and people who followed the rules are stuck. We need a sophisticated sober conversation among the American people and leaders about the economy; it remains to be seen whether actions like Occupy Wall Street will spark or hinder this needed conversation.
There's no substantial difference from similar yet marginalized protests that have taken place in the last 10-20 years, except the current protest fits neatly with the widespread angst over the current financial and jobs situations. The lack of coherent agenda helps the protest by allowing others to impute their concerns and anxiety on the story. The media helps the protest because the media is in the business of telling simplified memetic stories. When enough dramatic ingredients are present, the media's professional story-tellers will fill in the blanks with their own narrative.
The Occupy Wall Street protest on its own merits is less than advertised, but the public angst amplified by the media coverage of the protest is real. However, the lack of reasonable options by the protestors may indicate the most powerful threat of the movement: emotion-driven oppositional force with a 1000 faces that can only attack and cannot compromise because it has no reasonable negotiable positions with which to compromise; in that light, Occupy Wall Street is an anarchist movement.
10/21/11 add: Lexington Green has a detailed account of his visit to OccupyChicago. He doesn't believe the Occupy Wall Street protest will lead to the sober national conversation we need. He believes the movement will more likely follow the destructive 60s template of tantrumic lashing out by mobs. (He points to an emphasis on nonviolence, but I didn't see that in my visit to OWS. I saw plenty of violent rhetoric in the composite viewpoints. As well, the 60s protest history that Green believes is being repeated featured peaceful protests displaced by violent protests.) He saw some worthwhile points in the protest but no prescriptive movement. Can I find a prescription? Can the Ivy civil-military movement evolve into the sober, prescriptive, problem-solving movement our nation needs?
11/26/11 add: Matt Continetti, who as a student wrote about ROTC return for the Columbia Political Review, analyzes the Occupy Wall Street movement. He sums it up thus: "The idea is utopian socialism. The method is revolutionary anarchism."
5/1/12 add: Another analysis, Shoplifters of the World Unite, which says the lack of message is the defining feature.
Eric
Common views at the protest: Wealth redistribution is good (whether through big estate tax or uncovering the corporations' secret trillions), President Obama is reviled as an exposed Manchurian candidate corporate stooge, and the belief that big money (400 richest families and corporations!) and big government are closely allied in advancing plutocracy against the populist interest. Anti-corporate is a common label at the protest but different protestors define the label differently. On one end, some are calling for campaign finance reform and barring corporations from political campaign funding, very much in line with the opposing view in the Citizens United case. On the other end, there are ideological calls for an end to capitalism, destruction of the current political economic system, and radically redistributive class warfare (99% overthrow of the 1%). I don't agree with many of the various views at the protest, but I have some common ground with a few of the more reasonable protests. I agree with the critique of nominally American but actually global corporations that their primary loyalty, indeed their legally mandated fiduciary duty, is not to America and Americans, but to their own corporate profits. which may be maximized by investing and employing outside of the US. I also am concerned that legal personhood has been extended too far for corporations, which was a commercial legal concept that imbued a specific business model with a specific legal character and rights in order to serve a specific risk-mitigating business purpose, not to actually become a fully endowed legal person. Generally, I agree that a critical reassessment needs to take place of our relative global economic standing, and our system and assumptions. Perhaps most troubling is the dire job market for the college educated, many of whom committed their youthful prime and took the risk of non-dischargeable student loan debt based on the promise that higher education was the path to financial security. That promise has been broken and people who followed the rules are stuck. We need a sophisticated sober conversation among the American people and leaders about the economy; it remains to be seen whether actions like Occupy Wall Street will spark or hinder this needed conversation.
There's no substantial difference from similar yet marginalized protests that have taken place in the last 10-20 years, except the current protest fits neatly with the widespread angst over the current financial and jobs situations. The lack of coherent agenda helps the protest by allowing others to impute their concerns and anxiety on the story. The media helps the protest because the media is in the business of telling simplified memetic stories. When enough dramatic ingredients are present, the media's professional story-tellers will fill in the blanks with their own narrative.
The Occupy Wall Street protest on its own merits is less than advertised, but the public angst amplified by the media coverage of the protest is real. However, the lack of reasonable options by the protestors may indicate the most powerful threat of the movement: emotion-driven oppositional force with a 1000 faces that can only attack and cannot compromise because it has no reasonable negotiable positions with which to compromise; in that light, Occupy Wall Street is an anarchist movement.
10/21/11 add: Lexington Green has a detailed account of his visit to OccupyChicago. He doesn't believe the Occupy Wall Street protest will lead to the sober national conversation we need. He believes the movement will more likely follow the destructive 60s template of tantrumic lashing out by mobs. (He points to an emphasis on nonviolence, but I didn't see that in my visit to OWS. I saw plenty of violent rhetoric in the composite viewpoints. As well, the 60s protest history that Green believes is being repeated featured peaceful protests displaced by violent protests.) He saw some worthwhile points in the protest but no prescriptive movement. Can I find a prescription? Can the Ivy civil-military movement evolve into the sober, prescriptive, problem-solving movement our nation needs?
11/26/11 add: Matt Continetti, who as a student wrote about ROTC return for the Columbia Political Review, analyzes the Occupy Wall Street movement. He sums it up thus: "The idea is utopian socialism. The method is revolutionary anarchism."
5/1/12 add: Another analysis, Shoplifters of the World Unite, which says the lack of message is the defining feature.
Eric
Wednesday, 5 October 2011
Tuesday, 4 October 2011
Columbia University Science Fiction Society
CUSFS is cool. I would like to have been involved with the club more as a student, but I'm still on their mailing list.
Eric
Eric
Sunday, 2 October 2011
Saturday, 1 October 2011
Snapshot of my 2003-04 views on the War on Terror
In the years following 9/11, I vigorously debated in varied settings about the War on Terror and American global leadership. My most extensive unvarnished contemporary arguments are preserved on-line in pseudonymous posts on BasketballBoards.net (now BasketballForum.com). In fact, the Perspective on and Contextualizing the argument over Operation Iraqi Freedom posts on this blog grew out of my BBB.net posts. A few days ago, due to a laptop breakdown, I powered up my old desktop computer for the first time in years and rediscovered a .txt file where I had saved a selection of my BBB.net posts from 7/30/03 to 6/5/04. I'm posting the compilation as I found it with no adds, cuts, or editing - a historical snapshot.
Given that I joined BBB.net to talk NBA basketball, why did I become involved in intensive 9/11-related debates there? My 8/31/03 post explained:
The compilation is mostly in chronological order, and where the dates skip shouldn't cause any confusion. However, due to the loss of formatting from pasting into a .txt file, it's not always clear where my responses divide from where I quote other posters. It's a ranging, rather exhaustively long read, so I split the file into 4 manageable chunks.
Enjoy: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
Eric
Given that I joined BBB.net to talk NBA basketball, why did I become involved in intensive 9/11-related debates there? My 8/31/03 post explained:
The main reason I've written so much in this thread and it's predecessor thread (War in Iraq poll) is a comment one poster made that irked me. He said something to the effect that people who support the US mission in Iraq or the Bush admin's foreign policy in general were ignorant Americans who were easily duped, and even claimed that anybody with even a rudimentary college education would oppose the Bush admin's actions. You know, too many of our guys and gals - better people than any of us - are working overtime, hurting and dying in Iraq right now, doing the right thing, for me to let comments like that go, even on BBB.net. In terms of morale, it is very important to our soldiers as they endure many hardships in Iraq and Afghanistan that they know the American people back them and support their mission. My goal with my posts, along with fellow posters, is to show that there is an informed, intelligent basis for Americans to be patriotic and/or to support post-9/11 US-led missions, without abandoning critical faculties.My engagement in BBB.net was also a self-conscious experiment in nuanced contextual discourse. In 2003-04, people were still paying attention to the hotly debated global controversy with room to listen because the partisan poles, though quickly taking form, weren't yet immutably hardened. BBB.net's Everything But Basketball forum was an ideal setting for democratic dialogue because the BBB.net community was diverse and not politically self-selected as it would have been on a political website. Internet discussion boards in general allow participants to focus on the words without the distractions inherent in other media, digest the content at their own pace, and deliberately respond on a level playing field. But in the end, despite all the conducive features of the setting, my attempt at nuanced contextual discourse was frustrating and ultimately disillusioning. (You can see the frustration in my changing tone in the posts.) I failed to beat the pull of the partisan echo chamber.
The compilation is mostly in chronological order, and where the dates skip shouldn't cause any confusion. However, due to the loss of formatting from pasting into a .txt file, it's not always clear where my responses divide from where I quote other posters. It's a ranging, rather exhaustively long read, so I split the file into 4 manageable chunks.
Enjoy: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
Eric
Anwar al-Awlaki killed
Good news if confirmed . . . and a deserved congratulations to President Obama and the Team America he commands. Part of winning hearts and minds is living up to the dichotomous principle "No better friend - no worse enemy".
Read John Yoo's rebuttal of the claim that the killing of al-Awlaki, an American citizen, was illegal. Make sure to read the comments. Professor Yoo states a 2-prong test for whether a killing is a legal war act: "What is important is not whether someone is an alien or a citizen, but whether they are a member of an enemy conducting hostilities against the United States". In other words, did al-Awlaki qualify as a "member of an enemy" (against the US)? And did his conduct qualify as "hostilities" (against the US)? Keep in mind that historical precedents are necessarily imperfect when applied to a "new type of war".
To President Obama's critics who are reluctant to give credit where credit is due, Walt Harrington reminds that "[President Bush's] only remark about Barack Obama was, as I recall it, “No matter who wins, when he hears what I hear every morning, it will change him.”"
Eric
Read John Yoo's rebuttal of the claim that the killing of al-Awlaki, an American citizen, was illegal. Make sure to read the comments. Professor Yoo states a 2-prong test for whether a killing is a legal war act: "What is important is not whether someone is an alien or a citizen, but whether they are a member of an enemy conducting hostilities against the United States". In other words, did al-Awlaki qualify as a "member of an enemy" (against the US)? And did his conduct qualify as "hostilities" (against the US)? Keep in mind that historical precedents are necessarily imperfect when applied to a "new type of war".
To President Obama's critics who are reluctant to give credit where credit is due, Walt Harrington reminds that "[President Bush's] only remark about Barack Obama was, as I recall it, “No matter who wins, when he hears what I hear every morning, it will change him.”"
Eric
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
Selfless service: Alwyn Cashe and Burhanuddin Rabbani
The 7 Army values are, of course, Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, Personal Courage.
Read about two heroes of the War on Terror who embodied Selfless Service, Army SFC Alwyn Cashe (thanks to blackfive) and assassinated Afghanistan peace-broker Burhanuddin Rabbani.
SFC Cashe deserves the Medal of Honor. His case should become a case study for a Medal of Honor upgrade, if the folks championing the cause can push it through the bureaucracy. SFC Cashe's actions as Platoon Sergeant to save his men by sacrificing himself exemplified the essence of everything we learned about leading soldiers and honored the Army NCO Creed: My two basic responsibilities will always be uppermost in my mind—accomplishment of my mission and the welfare of my soldiers. . . . All soldiers are entitled to outstanding leadership; I will provide that leadership. I know my soldiers and I will always place their needs above my own. The short version taught to me was 'Mission First, Soldiers Always'.
In the 'Why We Fight', I was struck especially by these excerpts from Camelia Entekhabifard's NY Times column about her former neighbor:
10/2/11 add: The assassination of Mr. Rabbani reminds of the Jan 2011 assassination of Pakistani governor and liberal reformer Saleem Taseer.
Eric
Read about two heroes of the War on Terror who embodied Selfless Service, Army SFC Alwyn Cashe (thanks to blackfive) and assassinated Afghanistan peace-broker Burhanuddin Rabbani.
SFC Cashe deserves the Medal of Honor. His case should become a case study for a Medal of Honor upgrade, if the folks championing the cause can push it through the bureaucracy. SFC Cashe's actions as Platoon Sergeant to save his men by sacrificing himself exemplified the essence of everything we learned about leading soldiers and honored the Army NCO Creed: My two basic responsibilities will always be uppermost in my mind—accomplishment of my mission and the welfare of my soldiers. . . . All soldiers are entitled to outstanding leadership; I will provide that leadership. I know my soldiers and I will always place their needs above my own. The short version taught to me was 'Mission First, Soldiers Always'.
In the 'Why We Fight', I was struck especially by these excerpts from Camelia Entekhabifard's NY Times column about her former neighbor:
By deciding to try to broker peace between Mr. Karzai’s government and the Taliban, Mr. Rabbani acted against the wishes of his political enemies, as well as many of his friends and colleagues. A number of influential spiritual leaders and political heavyweights who tried to guard Afghanistan’s young democracy in the post-Taliban period had already been murdered.Emphasis added. Mr. Rabbani and the enemy who killed him understood the stakes. Do we?
. . .
Though Mr. Rabbani often criticized the Karzai administration, he remained hopeful that the Afghan people would take advantage of the world’s interest in their country to achieve peace before it was too late. “We must act before international donors stop caring whether or not we achieve democracy or a higher standard of living,” he told me. “One day, the world will no longer care and we will lose our support.”
10/2/11 add: The assassination of Mr. Rabbani reminds of the Jan 2011 assassination of Pakistani governor and liberal reformer Saleem Taseer.
Eric
Saturday, 24 September 2011
2 cool things: Mount Fuji climbing instructions and Bermuda bus map
From when I climbed Mount Fuji, July 2000:
Pocari Sweat!
From my visit to Bermuda, June 2011, the Bermuda buses plus the ferry are the most convenient and cheapest way to travel the length of Bermuda:
Eric
Pocari Sweat!
From my visit to Bermuda, June 2011, the Bermuda buses plus the ferry are the most convenient and cheapest way to travel the length of Bermuda:
Eric
Friday, 23 September 2011
Walt Harrington's Dubya and Me
Read it. (tip from neo) I too believe history will judge President Bush more kindly than his contemporary detractors. I didn't vote for President Bush in 2000; I voted for President Bush in 2004 and am proud that I did. Though I can quibble and disagree with him in places, I believe Bush made the right big decisions in historic, perhaps epochal, moments that demanded them. I can't help but favorably compare Harrington's depiction of President Bush with Nassir Ghaemi's poor assessment of Bush, despite that the premise from which Ghaemi's unthoughtful partisan hit on Bush followed is favorable towards me. Harrington's piece reminds me of Tom Junod's The Case for George W. Bush.
Eric
Eric
Monday, 12 September 2011
Thoughts on the 10 year anniversary of 9/11
I visited Columbia for the 10th anniversary commemoration of 9/11. Organized by the Chaplain's office, the morning memorial was a solemn but also modest and low-key affair on Low plaza. My sense is that this year's 9/11 commemorations will be the last at Columbia. With Osama bin Laden killed, years of vitriolic partisan clash and conspiracy-mongering sapping our collective will to fight (see Mao's guidance on psy-ops in guerrilla warfare), and our imperiled economy the proximate concern, most Americans believe a decade on is the appropriate time to relegate 9/11 to history. By now, most 9/11 remembrances are sanitized of determined resolve to fight the enemy and more akin to recalling a unique disaster (like a plane accident or hurricane) than an ongoing contest. Republican and Democrat politicians both want to move on from the war. The problem is that the mission that our nation undertook after 9/11, what we knew then would be a Long War, is not finished. The enemy continues to vigorously compete. I'm glad YAF put out its "Never Forget" memorial on College Walk . . .
<aside> Ron Lewenberg was right - Students United for Victory should have stayed focused on non-partisan support for the war effort instead of widening its focus to become Students United for America. When I made the decision to alter our course, SU4V was struggling and our founding purpose seemed too narrow to sustain a long-term life for the group. I believed redesigning SU4V to SU4A was a needed boost. I was also ambitious, aggressive, cognizant of the short window for student activists, and unwilling to take a step back. SU4A's mission of unifying Americans and solutions for the nation's challenges, including the War on Terror, reflected my deeper concern for America and was important, too; the SU4A concept is vindicated by the partisan gridlock, acrimony, and compounding problems our nation is afflicted with today. But the practical, unintended consequence of widening the focus from SU4V to SU4A is that SU4V's founding purpose was diluted and distracted from until eventually, SU4A lost the mission of supporting the war effort altogether. I designed the SU4A mission to be plastic around a set of core values in order to adapt to the needs of the nation, but that plasticity led the group to devolve into meaninglessness. In hindsight, SU4V's original tasks of countering misinformation, encouraging sober discourse, and maintaining non-partisan support for the War on Terror outweighed the broader SU4A mission. Since 9/11, our highest elections and national policy decisions have been influenced by popular opinion on the War on Terror. SU4V's mission and character were unique at Columbia and its founding purpose, while narrow in scope, should have been preserved. That said, weighing the alternatives in 2002 wasn't simple. I'm not discounting my contemporary analysis that SU4V would be short-lived without the SU4A redesign. That Ron was right doesn't necessarily mean I was wrong; SU4V was struggling and, in the short term, SU4A did work as intended. But the fact is SU4A failed to survive in the long term, and SU4V died with it. Knowing what I know now, I would have tried harder to preserve SU4V in its founding form, even if its survival would have required contracting the group to marginal production and a modest size. I could have innovated other ways, as we did with ICRA and the ROTC movement, to pursue the goals I conflated in SU4A. My call and my mistake. </aside>
. . . The War on Terror is like fighting cancer and quitting the treatment halfway guarantees a weakened body left to the mercy of an evolutionarily toughened disease. Certainly, the economic cost of the war is a key consideration. Economic power is a prerequisite of military power and America's economic standing is shaky right now. Assuming we don't abandon the struggle, the question is how we adapt to keep up the fight at a sustainable - and a winnable - level. It could be that we actually will compete more agilely against the terrorists when we're forced to adapt and innovate with less funding and resources. Coupled with a defter footprint, less media attention could mean more creative room for our operators, too.
I agree with Richard Landes. Too many leaders, political and cultural, responded to 9/11 with nearsighted partisanship rather than patriotism, and retrenched in their preferred beliefs rather than a sober assessment of what we need to do to solve very complex problems and defeat a focused, aggressive enemy whose competitive advantage is powered with those same problems. A few celebrities at home have even sought to actively undermine our war effort as barbaric, a monstrous conspiracy, and a purposeful distraction from social priorities. Before 9/11, global critics - not only competitors, but some beneficiaries of Pax Americana - maligned American world leadership as a dangerous "hyperpower" that must be reined in and controlled. Since 9/11, many others have accused America of being the root cause of the world's problems, even as we're struggling against truly toxic entities and championing liberal reform. Their narrow perspective implicitly excuses anyone opposing us - even terrorists - as righteously standing up to American hegemony while also, tragically, implicitly dismissing anyone who cooperates with America - even courageous liberal reformers - as illegitimate, a lackey at best or traitor at worst. The commitment to blame America is so extreme for some, they've even blamed the body count from the terrorists' assassinations, mass murders, and other depravities on the US. Early in the 9/11 debates, I described this enabling outlook as 'terrorist-as-proxy', meaning people opposed America in the War on Terror not because they necessarily shared the terrorists' cause, but because they ascribed their various grievances against America to the terrorists' struggle. The terrorists have learned to use this self-destructive Western mindset by tailoring their propaganda to the blame-America-first narrative.
Our choices in the War on Terror on 9/11 were to try harder with our limited pre-9/11 strategy, full isolationist withdrawal, a killing war, or armed intervention with fundamental liberal reform (as opposed to simple democracy). We chose to fight for a liberal peace and reform of a dysfunctionally crippled, conspiracy-addled part of the world. Radical political Islam seems to be a zealous religious version of Communism that promises a similarly centralized systemic antidote for the evils of class, individualism, and capitalism, and shares Communism's killing hatred of liberalism. In the 3-way contest between Islamists, old-school dictators (and would-be dictators), and liberal reformers, the liberal reformers don't have a chance without our intervention. In that part of the world, liberal reformers are by far the weakest group and opposed by killers. If we abandon the liberal reformers, they're dead.
The enemy is 4GW, resilient, adaptable, thinking, and manipulative. He thinks pragmatically in the big picture and long view, while partisans in the West often seem deliberately obtuse. The enemy is totally committed to the revolution for a new world order. For the 9/11 attacks, the terrorists didn't need prodigious resources, merely the will to win by any means necessary and masterful use of our vulnerabilities, preferences, and beliefs against us. Meanwhile, the enemy protects himself by embedding in the black-market areas (eg, narcotics, smuggling, failed states) outside of the normal authority of our world order. The dictators of nation-states are within our conventional reach; the Islamists are not.
Our goal of liberal reform in the War on Terror is bottom-up and must begin with change at the granular personal level. The changes we need to happen have a much better chance of taking root in Iraq than in Afghanistan, but New York Times article Many Iraqis Have Second Thoughts as U.S. Exit Nears by Michael S. Schmidt hints at the psychological obstacles to liberal reform there. With great sacrifice battling vicious illiberal forces on Iraq's behalf and enormous investment into the new Iraq, America has given Iraq the opportunity for liberal reform, but if Iraqis are unable to overcome their modes of thinking, we can't make them do so. The article shows Iraqis sensing the opportunity for a better future slipping away, but their handicapped thinking is sabotaging their ability to seize the opportunity. (It's only human of them; as Richard Landes explained above, Westerners are equally suspectible to trapping themselves with handicapped thinking.) The situation reminds me of the subjects on the A&E show Intervention: with the reality of the American military's departure facing them, now may be the moment where Iraqis are finally ready to change with the proper assistance from us. The competitive illiberal forces inside and surrounding Iraq have not been neutralized. We should continue to play an active role assisting Iraq, though our future guidance may not be predominantly military in character. America's Iraq mission should adapt, not end.
On a personal level, 9/11 knocked me off my plan to find my life path at Columbia. Contemplating the ash cloud downtown that was the World Trade Center, aware of the notorious history of American college students in the Vietnam War, I felt a powerful responsibility to support America, especially our soldiers going to war, as a new student and recent soldier on campus. I became a columnist and campus activist and passionately debated about the War on Terror and American hegemony and leadership. I learned what naive passionate activists often learn: doing your best to make a difference may only result in a disappearing difference in the long run, no matter how promisingly flashy the immediate returns. My classmates who claimed the best way they could respond to 9/11 was to succeed in their chosen niche were right after all. Student activists who give up their self interest for the cause do so at the risk of becoming less than they could have been, which means they'll have less to bring to the table in the long run, for themselves, their future family, and society-at-large. Lesson for student activists: think of yourself as the goose that lays the golden eggs. If you give in to the temptation to sacrifice yourself in the now, then you may have too little to give in the future. (That's not to say all my activist efforts were wasted.) For all that I did at Columbia in reaction to 9/11, though, I feel as though I still have unfinished business - that I have not done my part. But what can I do? Perhaps as others move on, they'll leave room for me to work that otherwise would not have been open. Maybe the folks who stay behind will be able to do more. Or maybe bureaucrats will occupy all the available opportunities to make a difference and squander them.
Eric
Saturday, 10 September 2011
Paragon Sports warehouse sale
Paragon Sports is holding its annual warehouse sale from 9/8/11 to 9/18/11. The merchandise on sale is mostly shoes and clothing and various athletic gear. A salesman explained to me that as the bins and racks empty, they're being refilled from boxes of mixed items, which means something you can't find today could be brought out later. Or not - you just have to come back and find out.
I've gone each day hoping to find a cheap pair of Vibrams, but no luck. There have been Vibrams in the bins, just not in my size. The closest I found was a Euro 47 (roughly US 13) pair for about $45. The sale prices are advertised as 50% to 80% off the retail price. Winter and ski/snowboard outer wear are an additional 20% off the sales price.
I've bought a pair of Crocs Classics ($9, retail $30) and New Balance CT1004 tennis shoes ($56, retail $115) for walking, a Bonfire Radiant snowboarding jacket ($80, retail $200) for everyday winter wear, and a Marmot Whitehorse down parka ($80, retail $375). I don't know how much use I'll get out of the Marmot parka, because it rarely gets cold enough in NYC for a parka designed for bitter winter weather, but almost-80% off the retail price was just too good a deal to pass up for a well-regarded product I might use.
Eric
I've gone each day hoping to find a cheap pair of Vibrams, but no luck. There have been Vibrams in the bins, just not in my size. The closest I found was a Euro 47 (roughly US 13) pair for about $45. The sale prices are advertised as 50% to 80% off the retail price. Winter and ski/snowboard outer wear are an additional 20% off the sales price.
I've bought a pair of Crocs Classics ($9, retail $30) and New Balance CT1004 tennis shoes ($56, retail $115) for walking, a Bonfire Radiant snowboarding jacket ($80, retail $200) for everyday winter wear, and a Marmot Whitehorse down parka ($80, retail $375). I don't know how much use I'll get out of the Marmot parka, because it rarely gets cold enough in NYC for a parka designed for bitter winter weather, but almost-80% off the retail price was just too good a deal to pass up for a well-regarded product I might use.
Eric
Monday, 29 August 2011
Hurricane Irene thoughts
My thoughts on Hurricane Irene are limited to NYC and the NYC media and government.
The effect of Irene on NYC was anticlimatically mild after all the hype. There was a windy rainstorm on Saturday night, but certainly nothing close to a hurricane. I made it a point to walk past the mayor-ordered evacuation Zone A and out onto the end of a Hudson River pier during the windiest and hardest rain of the storm, about 1-2 am Sunday. When it was announced that Irene's eye had arrived in NYC at 9 am Sunday, the rain by that time had actually lightened to a drizzle with a mild breeze. While the wind picked up later on Sunday, though still nothing near hurricane levels, the rain stopped altogether. Sunday - the day Hurricane Irene was supposed to rampage through NYC - dawned in fact as a beautiful day in the city with blue skies, cleansed air, and a welcome brisk breeze.
The NYC media did report the facts on Irene, but they also sensationalized their coverage with the direst spin of Katrina-esque flooding and windborne destruction. Even as the hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm, the media acted as though the danger remained as high as for a hurricane. Even as it became apparent on Sunday that the impact of Irene on NYC was normal for a hard rainstorm, television reporters seemed to go out of their way to seek out low-lying areas and dips that normally flood during rainstorms to serve as backdrops for their continued breathless reporting. The television news, deployed throughout the weekend in 24-hour crisis mode, seemed invested in the idea of an epic natural disaster befalling NYC, and in the absence of an actual disaster, selectively spot-lighted and exaggerated whatever photogenic storm effects they could find. Local politicians, angling for relief funds from the state and fed, dutifully played along in interviews. As it became obvious the storm danger was over, the on-scene reporters looked increasingly foolish as they exclaimed incredulously about motorists driving through waterlogged intersections, pedestrians out strolling, and even beach-goers enjoying the water.
I don't fault the media for warning New Yorkers earlier in the week. Harsh weather can become dangerous if you're caught in it unprepared. It's not a bad thing for people to be more conscientious about emergencies and generally resilient. Predicted weather can change unpredictably, for better or worse. I'm reminded of when the weather office in my last unit forecasted a typhoon (an Asian hurricane). Weather is serious business in an aviation unit, so I thought of Traci's dad (RIP), who was scheduled to drive on a long business trip. I called her to warn him, which she did, but Traci's dad ignored my warning. That predicted typhoon turned out to be a normal rainstorm, too, and I felt foolish and embarassed afterwards. It happens. Where the NYC media beclowned themselves was sticking stubbornly to their disaster reporting even as it became obvious to their audience that there was no disaster.
As for the government response, I don't understand why the subways, trains, and buses were shut down entirely and shut down so earlier (noon Saturday). Shutting down the public transportation system shuts down the city. It was an unprecedented drastic preemptive action that seemed disproportionate ahead of the event and unnecessary in hindsight. Rainstorms are not rare in NYC; I can only imagine their fear was of massive flooding of the subway system by a storm surge of corrosive seawater, not rain flooding. But even in the case of a storm surge, the MTA should have been able to run limited service with a shutdown of the entire system held back as a last resort.
My guess is that the drastic preemptive actions, including the evacuation, ordered by the city were a reaction to the criticism of the city's response to the 2010 "blizzard". Having grown up in Queens and witnessed the city's response to previous heavy snowstorms, I thought the city's response to the heavy snowstorm last winter was normal. Only the harsh media criticism and subsequent politicization were new. Predictably, the consequence of punishing a normal response is the elicitation of an abnormal response in the future.
Eric
The effect of Irene on NYC was anticlimatically mild after all the hype. There was a windy rainstorm on Saturday night, but certainly nothing close to a hurricane. I made it a point to walk past the mayor-ordered evacuation Zone A and out onto the end of a Hudson River pier during the windiest and hardest rain of the storm, about 1-2 am Sunday. When it was announced that Irene's eye had arrived in NYC at 9 am Sunday, the rain by that time had actually lightened to a drizzle with a mild breeze. While the wind picked up later on Sunday, though still nothing near hurricane levels, the rain stopped altogether. Sunday - the day Hurricane Irene was supposed to rampage through NYC - dawned in fact as a beautiful day in the city with blue skies, cleansed air, and a welcome brisk breeze.
The NYC media did report the facts on Irene, but they also sensationalized their coverage with the direst spin of Katrina-esque flooding and windborne destruction. Even as the hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm, the media acted as though the danger remained as high as for a hurricane. Even as it became apparent on Sunday that the impact of Irene on NYC was normal for a hard rainstorm, television reporters seemed to go out of their way to seek out low-lying areas and dips that normally flood during rainstorms to serve as backdrops for their continued breathless reporting. The television news, deployed throughout the weekend in 24-hour crisis mode, seemed invested in the idea of an epic natural disaster befalling NYC, and in the absence of an actual disaster, selectively spot-lighted and exaggerated whatever photogenic storm effects they could find. Local politicians, angling for relief funds from the state and fed, dutifully played along in interviews. As it became obvious the storm danger was over, the on-scene reporters looked increasingly foolish as they exclaimed incredulously about motorists driving through waterlogged intersections, pedestrians out strolling, and even beach-goers enjoying the water.
I don't fault the media for warning New Yorkers earlier in the week. Harsh weather can become dangerous if you're caught in it unprepared. It's not a bad thing for people to be more conscientious about emergencies and generally resilient. Predicted weather can change unpredictably, for better or worse. I'm reminded of when the weather office in my last unit forecasted a typhoon (an Asian hurricane). Weather is serious business in an aviation unit, so I thought of Traci's dad (RIP), who was scheduled to drive on a long business trip. I called her to warn him, which she did, but Traci's dad ignored my warning. That predicted typhoon turned out to be a normal rainstorm, too, and I felt foolish and embarassed afterwards. It happens. Where the NYC media beclowned themselves was sticking stubbornly to their disaster reporting even as it became obvious to their audience that there was no disaster.
As for the government response, I don't understand why the subways, trains, and buses were shut down entirely and shut down so earlier (noon Saturday). Shutting down the public transportation system shuts down the city. It was an unprecedented drastic preemptive action that seemed disproportionate ahead of the event and unnecessary in hindsight. Rainstorms are not rare in NYC; I can only imagine their fear was of massive flooding of the subway system by a storm surge of corrosive seawater, not rain flooding. But even in the case of a storm surge, the MTA should have been able to run limited service with a shutdown of the entire system held back as a last resort.
My guess is that the drastic preemptive actions, including the evacuation, ordered by the city were a reaction to the criticism of the city's response to the 2010 "blizzard". Having grown up in Queens and witnessed the city's response to previous heavy snowstorms, I thought the city's response to the heavy snowstorm last winter was normal. Only the harsh media criticism and subsequent politicization were new. Predictably, the consequence of punishing a normal response is the elicitation of an abnormal response in the future.
Eric
Friday, 12 August 2011
Class in America
In 2009, Sandra Tsing Loh (whose name is familiar but I can't remember why) wrote a disturbing and depressing 25 year retrospective on Paul Fussell's book Class for her Atlantic column.
Eric
Eric
Saturday, 30 July 2011
WSJ: Depression in Command
Psychiatrist links depression with activist crisis leadership while stable minds are better suited for caretaker status quo management, or Winston Churchill versus Neville Chamberlain. About: Dr. Ghaemi is a professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and director of the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts Medical Center. This essay is adapted from his new book, "A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness."
Excerpt:
9/4/11 up to page 110 thoughts: I've read about GEN Sherman, Lincoln, Ghandi, Churchill, and MLK. Unfortunately, the book is flawed by an unthoughtful anti-Bush, anti-GWOT prejudice; I view the GWOT as fitting the qualities the author describes. It seems these great empathic crisis leaders, who are rare, rely on being fellow travelers with both the objects of their resistance and their own normal followers. When it works, their movements are cohesive due more to effectively shared rational (political and/or economic) goals than a universal empathic journey toward agape. (The empathy v rationality theme reminds me of the conflict in Stephen King's The Stand.) For normal people who value more tangible goals, the values held so dear and articulated so carefully by empathic leaders amount to only so much pretty rhetoric. After their erstwhile followers eventually, and perhaps inevitably, diverge on their normal course, many of these empathic crisis leaders, although revered by their communities for their successes, come to view themselves as ultimate failures. These leaders aren't pacifist ideologues: nonviolent resistance is the preferred way to resist injustice, but not the only way; violent resistance is preferred to acquiescence. Ghandi and MLK, one a London-educated lawyer and the other a classically educated Christian American minister, were able to succeed with nonviolent resistance by defining their movements with intimate appeals to their objects' Western liberal values and altering their objects' political-economic calculations. Empathic crisis leaders succeed with deeply held convictions, their determination, empathy and realism. But what if the empathic crisis leader is resisting an object who is determined to resist back by whatever means necessary, with an incompatible perspective that views the crisis leader's justice as injustice for the object, and is less vulnerable to political-economic calculations? Then the empathic leader who prefers nonviolent resistance but refuses acquiescence takes on the violent resistance of the Civil War, World War II, or the War on Terror. What happens if the crisis leader's followers, who only pay lip service to their leader's values, decide that their rational interests are better served by decamping the resistance movement?
I finished reading the book quick reaction: The author compellingly supports the validity of his hypothesis and gives me needed hope and insight about my mental pathology and food for thought. His point is novel but simple once explained: certain mental pathologies, when applied the right way, enhance crisis leadership as much as they have been popularly known to enhance the arts. The idea rings true from personal experience. Crisis leadership, as a field of innovation, and interactive and expressive human endeavor, is much like an art form. Unfortunately, perhaps to fill a book with an idea that could have been explained more simply and concisely in a short paper, his presentation weakens when it departs from his basic descriptive methodology and attempts suspiciously simplistic, neat antithetical contrasts. The antithesis, as such, is less convincing than the thesis. When the book veers from the basic premise, Ghaemi seems less than rigorous, and right/wrong judgemental at times, and is possibly selective in his presentation (a no-no in scientific study). Already thinly veiled in other sections, Ghaemi's political bias overwhelms his work in the antithetical section devoted to "homoclite" Bush and Blair and the bad/wrong/lie Operation Iraqi Freedom and the War on Terror. His attempt there to claim he wrote as an honest broker weakens his credibility. The author has a follow-up article. Lots of reviews on-line, which I'd like to read. It seems Ghaemi's thesis has struck a chord ... or a nerve. Again, while an imperfect work, Ghaemi successfully supported his hypothesis, enough to give me hope. For the record, using the definitions laid out in the book, I qualify as empathic, depressive realist (too much so), and creative, but I'm not resilient. I'm more dysthymic and not hyperthymic, and become more cyclothymic when plugged into a cause.
Eric
Excerpt:
Great crisis leaders are not like the rest of us; nor are they like mentally healthy leaders. When society is happy, they toil in sadness, seeking help from friends and family and doctors as they cope with an illness that can be debilitating, even deadly. Sometimes they are up, sometimes they are down, but they are never quite well.
When traditional approaches begin to fail, however, great crisis leaders see new opportunities. When the past no longer guides the future, they invent a new future. When old questions are unanswerable and new questions unrecognized, they create new solutions. They are realistic enough to see painful truths, and when calamity occurs, they can lift up the rest of us.
9/4/11 up to page 110 thoughts: I've read about GEN Sherman, Lincoln, Ghandi, Churchill, and MLK. Unfortunately, the book is flawed by an unthoughtful anti-Bush, anti-GWOT prejudice; I view the GWOT as fitting the qualities the author describes. It seems these great empathic crisis leaders, who are rare, rely on being fellow travelers with both the objects of their resistance and their own normal followers. When it works, their movements are cohesive due more to effectively shared rational (political and/or economic) goals than a universal empathic journey toward agape. (The empathy v rationality theme reminds me of the conflict in Stephen King's The Stand.) For normal people who value more tangible goals, the values held so dear and articulated so carefully by empathic leaders amount to only so much pretty rhetoric. After their erstwhile followers eventually, and perhaps inevitably, diverge on their normal course, many of these empathic crisis leaders, although revered by their communities for their successes, come to view themselves as ultimate failures. These leaders aren't pacifist ideologues: nonviolent resistance is the preferred way to resist injustice, but not the only way; violent resistance is preferred to acquiescence. Ghandi and MLK, one a London-educated lawyer and the other a classically educated Christian American minister, were able to succeed with nonviolent resistance by defining their movements with intimate appeals to their objects' Western liberal values and altering their objects' political-economic calculations. Empathic crisis leaders succeed with deeply held convictions, their determination, empathy and realism. But what if the empathic crisis leader is resisting an object who is determined to resist back by whatever means necessary, with an incompatible perspective that views the crisis leader's justice as injustice for the object, and is less vulnerable to political-economic calculations? Then the empathic leader who prefers nonviolent resistance but refuses acquiescence takes on the violent resistance of the Civil War, World War II, or the War on Terror. What happens if the crisis leader's followers, who only pay lip service to their leader's values, decide that their rational interests are better served by decamping the resistance movement?
I finished reading the book quick reaction: The author compellingly supports the validity of his hypothesis and gives me needed hope and insight about my mental pathology and food for thought. His point is novel but simple once explained: certain mental pathologies, when applied the right way, enhance crisis leadership as much as they have been popularly known to enhance the arts. The idea rings true from personal experience. Crisis leadership, as a field of innovation, and interactive and expressive human endeavor, is much like an art form. Unfortunately, perhaps to fill a book with an idea that could have been explained more simply and concisely in a short paper, his presentation weakens when it departs from his basic descriptive methodology and attempts suspiciously simplistic, neat antithetical contrasts. The antithesis, as such, is less convincing than the thesis. When the book veers from the basic premise, Ghaemi seems less than rigorous, and right/wrong judgemental at times, and is possibly selective in his presentation (a no-no in scientific study). Already thinly veiled in other sections, Ghaemi's political bias overwhelms his work in the antithetical section devoted to "homoclite" Bush and Blair and the bad/wrong/lie Operation Iraqi Freedom and the War on Terror. His attempt there to claim he wrote as an honest broker weakens his credibility. The author has a follow-up article. Lots of reviews on-line, which I'd like to read. It seems Ghaemi's thesis has struck a chord ... or a nerve. Again, while an imperfect work, Ghaemi successfully supported his hypothesis, enough to give me hope. For the record, using the definitions laid out in the book, I qualify as empathic, depressive realist (too much so), and creative, but I'm not resilient. I'm more dysthymic and not hyperthymic, and become more cyclothymic when plugged into a cause.
Eric
Thursday, 14 July 2011
14-year-old's 19-year-old babysitter
News report and humorous discussion. Odd that a 14-year-old would even have a babysitter.
Loni Bouchard looks like she could be Zooey and Emily Deschanel's little sister. A six-month illicit affair is a decent run for a teenager. The young man should be empowered from passing a critical rite of passage early in his formative sexual development. For the mom who presumably hired Bouchard to babysit her son in the first place, and then called the cops on her, all I can say is, one hand giveth, the other taketh away. I wonder where the dad is in this affair and what he might think of the situation?
Add: some news vid of Bouchard and more babysitter love.
Eric
Monday, 11 July 2011
Simple homemade mouse trap
Check out this simple homemade mouse trap. It works:
Mice have entered my mom's apartment through (presumably) pipes in the central heating system. It's not a regular problem but it's happened several times now. There's a heating unit in each bedroom and the living room, and we've taped over the floor-level openings of the units since discovering they serve as mouse portals. But tape adhesive loosens with age and we don't check them constantly. We haven't used poison in my mom's apartment because we don't want poison spread around the apartment nor any hidden decomposing mouse corpses. Traditional snap traps, humane box traps, and smaller mouse-sized glue traps have been ineffective. The larger rat-sized glue traps have proven to be my most effective tool for catching mice.
I caught the 1st mouse in a 20-pound rice bag. The rice bag was stored upright, in a plastic bag and box, on the floor of the kitchen, with the bag opening on top folded down. Yet we heard the mouse rustling inside the bag and saw mouse poop on the rice within the bag. Placing snap, humane, and glue traps around the rice bag didn't work - the mouse avoided the traps and got into the rice. After several days, I placed a large glue trap within the bag, on the rice, and folded down the top of the bag as usual. That night, the mouse was caught on the glue trap in the bag. We now use a large black binder clip to seal the rice bags.
I caught the 2nd mouse in the opening of the heating unit in my mom's bedroom. I heard suspicious noises coming from the heating unit and guessed mice were using it to enter and leave the room. I placed glue traps on the floor where I estimated mice would drop from the unit. It worked. A mouse was caught either coming or going, but my guess is it dropped onto the trap. After that, we sealed the openings on the bedroom heating units.
I caught the 3rd mouse in the living room next to the television. Mice will sprint across a room to go from point A to point B, but typically travel along the walls. The TV is against the wall next to the heating unit, which creates a blind turn. A mouse-sized glue trap at the elbow of the turn failed to catch the mouse, but I knew the mouse was using that path. After a few days, I placed a larger rat-sized glue trap next to the smaller trap around the blind turn and against the front of the heating unit. I actually witnessed the mouse peek out from behind the TV, streak over the smaller glue trap, and get caught in the middle of the larger glue trap.
Last night, I caught the 4th mouse in a bucket modified into a sort of camouflaged punji stick pit. The mouse had entered from the living room heating unit where the tape over the opening had loosened. I set out glue traps, baited with chocolate, rice, cashews, or chicken meat, in the living room and kitchen, including a repeat of the TV-heating unit elbow trap, without success. I found the linked mouse trap instructions on google yesterday. I modified the trap because my mom doesn't have the 20-inch-plus high container that the blog recommends, only a 10-inch high bucket. I decided to place glue traps at the bottom of the bucket so an acrobatic mouse couldn't climb or jump out. I trimmed the plastic borders so they would fit together better in the bucket and form a more-or-less contiguous glue surface. Rather than an unbalanced toilet paper roll, I covered the bucket with a paper towel sheet. The paper towel hid the glue traps from the mouse. I taped one edge to the bucket so the sheet wouldn't fall in with the mouse and possibly save it from the glue traps. I taped two thin plastic strips to the bucket on the opposite side to barely hold up the trap side of the paper towel. I baited the trap with a piece of cooked pork on the center of the paper towel because mice like meat (see youtube videos of cannibal mice), which I hoped is rare enough in a typical mouse's diet to overcome this mouse's hitherto trap-avoiding judgement. My mom had spotted the mouse in the kitchen so I placed the bucket in the same location of the rice bag. The 1st mouse I caught had entered through the top of the taller rice bag so I thought this mouse would find a way onto the shorter bucket. A few hours later, I noticed one corner of the paper towel was down, though the paper towel was still up and the pork was untouched. The mouse pictured above was caught.
7/14/11 update: There's at least one more mouse in the apartment, and it's not falling for the bucket trap. Smart. 12/22/11 update: For about a month, the mouse ran around the apartment with seeming impunity, too often in plain sight. Tried a growing number of multiple types of homemade traps of increasing complexity and different baits with placements spread around the apartment; all failed. Finally spotted the mouse running behind a plastic bag of magazines that was against a wall and recalled seeing the mouse around that general area more than other places. Placed a simple glue trap at juncture of wall and bag. The mouse ran onto the trap and was caught. Turns out the mouse had gotten inside the plastic bag, shredded the magazines, and made itself a den. For all the mouse's cunning and my creativity making traps and placing them, the mouse was finally caught with a simple trap placed inside his pattern of travel. The key was identifying the mouse's habit. The lesson learned is that there is a point on a mouse's route to safe harbor (escape or den) where habit, with perhaps an irresistable sense of imminent safety, overwhelms its sense of caution.
Lessons learned:
Mice, at least savvy NYC mice, will avoid traps they can see and possibly touch, regardless of the bait. Simply placing traps on the mouse's known routes of travel doesn't work. If a mouse can directly associate bait with a trap, it won't take the bait. The trap has to be camouflaged somehow. Mice don't seem to sniff out visually hidden traps, though.
Use larger rat-sized glue traps. Traditional snap traps, humane box traps, and smaller mouse-sized glue traps are largely useless for catching mice, at least when they're used in the open.
The keys to catching a mouse are knowing the mouse's behavior to use against it and deception. Mice, while cautious, will develop patterns. The 1st two mice were caught because I identified where they were dropping blind and placed glue traps on their landing spots. The 3rd mouse was caught because it knew it could go over the smaller glue trap it saw, but was tricked by the adjoining larger glue trap the mouse didn't know was around the blind turn. The 4th mouse was the only one I induced to go someplace different than its pattern, although I drew upon a previous mouse's pattern in order to catch it.
There is a point on a mouse's route to safe harbor (escape or den) where habit overwhelms its sense of caution. That's the point where a mouse finds the sense of imminent safety irresistable and is prone to make a straight line break for safe harbor. Place a trap at the spot on the mouse's path to safe harbor where a smart mouse gets stupid and abandons caution.
A blurry sprinting mouse looks bigger than its actual size. I thought the above pictured mouse was twice as big as it turned out to be.
Mice will run across rooms occupied by people during the day or lit at night.
A caught mouse will empty its bowels and struggle hard to free itself.
Mice can squeeze through small openings. Maintenance nailed a chicken wire barrier over the living room heating unit opening, but chicken wire warps and bends. I recommend using tape instead. Use strong tape such as duct tape. But even strong tape loosens eventually and needs to be rechecked.
Eric
Mice have entered my mom's apartment through (presumably) pipes in the central heating system. It's not a regular problem but it's happened several times now. There's a heating unit in each bedroom and the living room, and we've taped over the floor-level openings of the units since discovering they serve as mouse portals. But tape adhesive loosens with age and we don't check them constantly. We haven't used poison in my mom's apartment because we don't want poison spread around the apartment nor any hidden decomposing mouse corpses. Traditional snap traps, humane box traps, and smaller mouse-sized glue traps have been ineffective. The larger rat-sized glue traps have proven to be my most effective tool for catching mice.
I caught the 1st mouse in a 20-pound rice bag. The rice bag was stored upright, in a plastic bag and box, on the floor of the kitchen, with the bag opening on top folded down. Yet we heard the mouse rustling inside the bag and saw mouse poop on the rice within the bag. Placing snap, humane, and glue traps around the rice bag didn't work - the mouse avoided the traps and got into the rice. After several days, I placed a large glue trap within the bag, on the rice, and folded down the top of the bag as usual. That night, the mouse was caught on the glue trap in the bag. We now use a large black binder clip to seal the rice bags.
I caught the 2nd mouse in the opening of the heating unit in my mom's bedroom. I heard suspicious noises coming from the heating unit and guessed mice were using it to enter and leave the room. I placed glue traps on the floor where I estimated mice would drop from the unit. It worked. A mouse was caught either coming or going, but my guess is it dropped onto the trap. After that, we sealed the openings on the bedroom heating units.
I caught the 3rd mouse in the living room next to the television. Mice will sprint across a room to go from point A to point B, but typically travel along the walls. The TV is against the wall next to the heating unit, which creates a blind turn. A mouse-sized glue trap at the elbow of the turn failed to catch the mouse, but I knew the mouse was using that path. After a few days, I placed a larger rat-sized glue trap next to the smaller trap around the blind turn and against the front of the heating unit. I actually witnessed the mouse peek out from behind the TV, streak over the smaller glue trap, and get caught in the middle of the larger glue trap.
Last night, I caught the 4th mouse in a bucket modified into a sort of camouflaged punji stick pit. The mouse had entered from the living room heating unit where the tape over the opening had loosened. I set out glue traps, baited with chocolate, rice, cashews, or chicken meat, in the living room and kitchen, including a repeat of the TV-heating unit elbow trap, without success. I found the linked mouse trap instructions on google yesterday. I modified the trap because my mom doesn't have the 20-inch-plus high container that the blog recommends, only a 10-inch high bucket. I decided to place glue traps at the bottom of the bucket so an acrobatic mouse couldn't climb or jump out. I trimmed the plastic borders so they would fit together better in the bucket and form a more-or-less contiguous glue surface. Rather than an unbalanced toilet paper roll, I covered the bucket with a paper towel sheet. The paper towel hid the glue traps from the mouse. I taped one edge to the bucket so the sheet wouldn't fall in with the mouse and possibly save it from the glue traps. I taped two thin plastic strips to the bucket on the opposite side to barely hold up the trap side of the paper towel. I baited the trap with a piece of cooked pork on the center of the paper towel because mice like meat (see youtube videos of cannibal mice), which I hoped is rare enough in a typical mouse's diet to overcome this mouse's hitherto trap-avoiding judgement. My mom had spotted the mouse in the kitchen so I placed the bucket in the same location of the rice bag. The 1st mouse I caught had entered through the top of the taller rice bag so I thought this mouse would find a way onto the shorter bucket. A few hours later, I noticed one corner of the paper towel was down, though the paper towel was still up and the pork was untouched. The mouse pictured above was caught.
7/14/11 update: There's at least one more mouse in the apartment, and it's not falling for the bucket trap. Smart. 12/22/11 update: For about a month, the mouse ran around the apartment with seeming impunity, too often in plain sight. Tried a growing number of multiple types of homemade traps of increasing complexity and different baits with placements spread around the apartment; all failed. Finally spotted the mouse running behind a plastic bag of magazines that was against a wall and recalled seeing the mouse around that general area more than other places. Placed a simple glue trap at juncture of wall and bag. The mouse ran onto the trap and was caught. Turns out the mouse had gotten inside the plastic bag, shredded the magazines, and made itself a den. For all the mouse's cunning and my creativity making traps and placing them, the mouse was finally caught with a simple trap placed inside his pattern of travel. The key was identifying the mouse's habit. The lesson learned is that there is a point on a mouse's route to safe harbor (escape or den) where habit, with perhaps an irresistable sense of imminent safety, overwhelms its sense of caution.
Lessons learned:
Mice, at least savvy NYC mice, will avoid traps they can see and possibly touch, regardless of the bait. Simply placing traps on the mouse's known routes of travel doesn't work. If a mouse can directly associate bait with a trap, it won't take the bait. The trap has to be camouflaged somehow. Mice don't seem to sniff out visually hidden traps, though.
Use larger rat-sized glue traps. Traditional snap traps, humane box traps, and smaller mouse-sized glue traps are largely useless for catching mice, at least when they're used in the open.
The keys to catching a mouse are knowing the mouse's behavior to use against it and deception. Mice, while cautious, will develop patterns. The 1st two mice were caught because I identified where they were dropping blind and placed glue traps on their landing spots. The 3rd mouse was caught because it knew it could go over the smaller glue trap it saw, but was tricked by the adjoining larger glue trap the mouse didn't know was around the blind turn. The 4th mouse was the only one I induced to go someplace different than its pattern, although I drew upon a previous mouse's pattern in order to catch it.
There is a point on a mouse's route to safe harbor (escape or den) where habit overwhelms its sense of caution. That's the point where a mouse finds the sense of imminent safety irresistable and is prone to make a straight line break for safe harbor. Place a trap at the spot on the mouse's path to safe harbor where a smart mouse gets stupid and abandons caution.
A blurry sprinting mouse looks bigger than its actual size. I thought the above pictured mouse was twice as big as it turned out to be.
Mice will run across rooms occupied by people during the day or lit at night.
A caught mouse will empty its bowels and struggle hard to free itself.
Mice can squeeze through small openings. Maintenance nailed a chicken wire barrier over the living room heating unit opening, but chicken wire warps and bends. I recommend using tape instead. Use strong tape such as duct tape. But even strong tape loosens eventually and needs to be rechecked.
Eric
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