The sounds of Army nostalgia: Reveille, Retreat, To the Colors, Taps

Every day I was on post in the Army, I listened to a bugle play Reveille at 0600, usually after we started PT, which meant we stopped our running or calisthenics to stand at attention and salute. The same bugle played Retreat and To the Colors at 1700, near the end of the work day. The songs weren't just background noise; they accompanied the raising and lowering of the post flag, which ritually and symbolically marked the beginning and end of each day in the Army (although we usually began our day before Reveille and ended it after Retreat). We all shared the same experience. Every soldier who was outdoors and on post stood at attention and saluted in the direction of the post flag during the music, whether or not he could see the flag. At 2200 every night, the mournful sound of Taps, the same bugle song played at the conclusion of soldiers' funerals, suffused hauntingly into the dark and quiet on post. Listening to these songs brings back feelings and memories of my day-to-day life as a soldier.

Eric

Too funny: mathematical proof that girls = evil

Via Moronpundit.

Eric

Louis Comfort Tiffany is The Man

I don't know how I missed posting this before . . . last year, I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art with my family for a special exhibition of European paintings associated with a famous art dealer - I forget his name. While at the museum that day, bored, I stopped in the Louis Comfort Tiffany exhibition down the hall and was amazed.

The "Tiffany" name is the same Tiffany of the decorative glass company. Tiffany was prolific. His art creations are breath-taking, meticulous, rich, genius - fill in the superlative - the beautiful results of a lifetime of wealth and means, love and passion, dedication and patience, sheer will, and extraordinary talent and creativity. You have to see them to understand - L.C. Tiffany is a standard bearer for what human beings can achieve.

From the small sampling of his art at the exhibit, I can only imagine Tiffany's masterwork, his Laurelton Hall, in its full glory before it decayed and burned. I'm reminded of the Neil Gaiman tale, Ramadan, in which Caliph Harun al-Rashid gives to Dream his magical Baghdad at the height of its glory, so that the city can be preserved before it is lost forever. I like to think Laurelton Hall still exists somewhere mythical, too.

Learn about Louis Comfort Tiffany here.

Eric

HTS and Newsweek . . . and Civil Affairs

The always excellent Small Wars Journal posted a response by Dr. Montgomery McFate, the Senior Social Science Adviser to the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System Program, to a Newsweek article critical of HTS. The HTS project intrigues me because it is an active, rather than symbolic, link between academia and the military and it upholds my liberal preferences for the use of the military.

That's not why I'm posting the link. One statement caught my attention as yet another endorsement (sign?) for Army Civil Affairs. It's quoted here in context and bold-faced:

4) That soldiers on their second- or third- tours possess inestimable knowledge about the area in which they are operating is undeniable. Yet, as currently organized, combat brigades do not possess the organic staff capability or assets to organize this knowledge and look at the broad questions that HTTs are concerned with. While civil affairs soldiers are the closest to such an organic asset, along with information operations, these assets are mission-focused and often lack the manpower to engage in the sort of question-formulation and asking that HTTs can. Nor do these assets always include personnel trained in social scientific analysis. Therefore, it is the job of HTTs to take the knowledge these soldiers have gleaned, to examine the information already being gathered on the ground on a daily basis, engage in original research, and consider this information in terms of broader issues from a different perspective in order to add to the brigade commander's situational awareness of the social, economic, political, cultural and psychological factors at work in the environment.

Suits me.

Eric

20APR08 Update: Here's a letter pointing out flaws in the HTS program from two former Human Terrain Team members featured in the Newsweek article. I hope the program survives its rocky inception.

Pretty decent South Park review site: Dave and Thomas

The Dave and Thomas blog dips into different pop culture topics. I like their South Park reviews.

Eric

Leadership and failure in complex organizations

Read this fascinating seminar, Leading Complex Organizations: Lessons from a Tragic Organizational Failure, led by West Point professor LTC Scott A. Snook in 2001 at Harvard.

Snook deliberately deconstructs the event cascade that led to a shocking friendly fire tragedy on April 14, 1994 in northern Iraq, and the different factors that fed it. There's much food for thought for any organizational leader, especially how many little things, including things that are normal and make sense in complex operations, can combine into a disaster.

Thanks to commenter "scooterkool" for posting the link in the Blackfive post.

Eric

Recidivist transit grinder

See Gothamist post, "Recidivist Transit Grinder" Blames Big Apple Babes. It's interesting to see the public and media react to a crime that's considered fairly common from our perspective in the office.

My only critical comment is about the label "recidivist transit grinder," attributed to ADA Contillo. In the office, we normally call them 'subway grinders'. I wonder why ADA Contillo used, or at least was quoted using, 'transit grinder'?

Eric