The typical NYC pedestrian face is tense, drawn tight, with a furrowed brow. Long term, do I want to live in a city that makes its residents look like that?
The baddest-ass TV character line ever: "Don't try and threaten me, Mulder. I've watched presidents die." Cigarette Smoking Man to Mulder, X-Files, season 2, episode One Breath. Here's the audio clip of the scene; the closest I could find on youtube is a clip from the same scene following the quote.
Black Swan and Nina (Natalie Portman) remind me a lot of The Machinist and Trevor Reznick (Christian Bale). An all-time creepy movie scene from The Machinist: Route 666.
I have a mixed reaction to the new High Line. The elevated park is a status symbol with plenty of modern design and novel and hip in a trendy gentrifying neighborhood. But its dimensions are too narrow to serve comfortably as a park and the decision to preserve the foliage on the tracks shrank the pedestrian space even further. The High Line is really a walkway that doesn't need many people to become crowded. Even when uncrowded, its location wedged among buildings makes for a cramped closed-in feel. The elevated tracks were there and a decision had to be made either to develop the space or tear down the tracks, so the decision to repurpose the space as a park is justifiable. But the elevated tracks wouldn't have been constructed, where they're located, in order to build a park. There is also growing concern in the neighborhood about overdevelopment, which the High Line is enabling. 9/29/11 add: AM NY story about the High Line effect harming neighborhood businesses despite initial hopes of boosting them.
From the movie Glory, the campfire prayer scene the night before the 54th Massachusetts stormed Fort Wagner. Matthew Broderick's Army Colonel Robert Shaw, the commander of the 54th, is a study in officership.
President Obama's 33K troop drawdown timeline for the Afghanistan mission makes sense. 33K (out of 100+K troops) by end of next year is reasonable. Afghanistan is not Iraq, either in nature or significance to the War on Terror (Iraq - long view of environmental reform; Afghanistan - immediate need to exterminate terrorists), and the expectations and goals should not be the same for both missions. That said, reducing the Afghanistan mission means also pulling the liberal peace-building threads of the mission. Hopefully, the troop drawdown accounts for the consequences to peace-building.
Liberal, peace-building COIN is expensive, murky and drawn out, and often not apparently effective, but in a Long War that is absent a definitive defeat in which the enemy takes total control of the space and populace (eg, Vietnam War), COIN may be necessary to secure the long-term political component in the broader strategic picture, even without sufficient tangible returns on investment.
My reaction at Professor Nacos's blog to the revelation from the raid intel that bin Laden believed al Qaeda was losing the War on Terror.
Know what it is as well as what it isn't. What it does as well as it what it doesn't. Creation can be a mess.
All That Jazz, the semi-autobiographical movie by Bob Fosse, should be watched by teenage boys as a learning piece about girls and relationships. The 1979 classic movie reinforces a by-now familiar dismaying lesson that is repeated in article 12 Reasons Women Can't Stand Nice Guys (see the youtube interview with the author, a self-defined "cougar"). xsplat offers sensible advice: Go through the Kubler-Ross stages of grief, DABDA (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance), to clear-eyed acceptance of the death of romantic ideals (aka Utopian vision, indie film in your head), then learn to deal with girls clear-headed about self and them.
Kate Mulvey talks about her feminist life while bemoaning her belated recognition of the destructive lie of feminism. A later article by Mulvey sporting a different take. Links from here.
Taken In Hand is about wives who want their husbands to be the boss of their marriage as a traditional dominant Man. Interesting perspective because my relationship model has been equal partners in a team. I could be wrong. Atlantic article A Wifely Duty is an apt companion piece.
Interesting article by a Columbia J-school prof on the effect of DNA testing on legal paternity and legal paternal obligation. What's best for the child? What's best for the cuckolded not-biological father? What is the legal obligation of the biological father? How is choice factored? What about the individual wish of the child and father? Can the questions of custody and financial upkeep be considered separately? A complicated issue, a key one in men's rights.
It's a hard decision and a life decision - a fork in the road. Break down in order to free myself to become and build my life as an awakened man, the free realized me. But if I expunge my idealism, then what's left? Who am I, and what purpose, direction, and meaning do I have? Neo chose the red pill, but Cypher regretted taking it, and Quaid rejected it. Reminder: Neo chose the red pill from Morpheus in order to escape the Matrix, over the blue pill to stay as Thomas A. Anderson in the Matrix; I keep forgetting which pill is which, like I keep forgetting the 82nd Airborne is All American and the 101st Airborne is the Screaming Eagles. Neo took the red pill and won Trinity's love and found himself as revered, uniquely important, god-like powerful The One. Cypher took the red pill and became irrelevant and menial, his love rejected by Trinity, and bitterly watched her choose newcomer Neo, thus learning the Matrix was better for him. Quaid rejected the red pill and killed the pill bearer in Total Recall in order to stay as rebel Quaid rather than become ordinary Quaid or company-man Hauser. Don Quixote, knowing reality, deliberately chose to live as a dream. What's better and right for me?
Congratulations, Judy. I'm not surprised you're going into psychiatry.
18-year-old swimsuit model Kate Upton does the Dougie. Add 2012: Cat Daddy and Peter Cottontail.
Best Gen-X rom-coms - 1996 Jerry Maguire and 1989 When Harry Met Sally? Dorothy Boyd (27-year-old Renee Zellwegger) and Sally Albright (28-year-old Meg Ryan).
Somewhat 'eh', but worth noting: How to Beat Negative Thoughts. The hypo of a mean-girls co-worker happened to me.
Eric
Friday, 24 June 2011
Tuesday, 21 June 2011
Ender's Game quotes
Ender's Game Chapter 8, page 102: Listen, Ender, commanders have just as much authority as you let them have. The more you obey, the more power they have over you.
Ender's Game Chapter 9, page 149: Isolation is - the optimum environment for creativity.
Ender's Game Chapter 11, page 185-186: Partly because of Ender's influence, they were the most flexible of armies, responding relatively quickly to new situations. Phoenix Army would be the best able to cope with Ender's fluid, unpatterned attack. . . . Petra was not Carn Carby; she had more flexible patterns and responded much more quickly to Ender's darting, improvised, unpredictable attack.
Ender's Game Chapter 11, page 198: I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.
* Ender's Game Chapter 14, page 275: Ender watched as all his squadrons moved at once, each responding to its own situation, all guided by Ender's overall command, but daring, improvising, feinting, attacking with an independence no bugger fleet had ever shown.
Ender's Game Chapter 14, page 277: Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it. So, Ender, I hope you do not bore me during your training with complaints that you are not having fun. Take what pleasure you can in the interstices of your work, but your work is first, learning is first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing.
Ender's Game Chapter 15, page 309: Ender took part in the work, as much as they would let him; it did not occur to them that this twelve-year-old boy might be as gifted at peace as he was at war. But he was patient with their tendency to ignore him, and learned to make his proposals and suggest his plans through the few adults who listened to him, and let them present them as their own. He was concerned, not about getting credit, but about getting the job done.
* Ender in Exile Chapter 2, page 29: He realized that Han Tzu would take his training and turn himself into the perfect father. And much of what he had learned in Battle School and here in Command School would probably serve him well. Patience, absolute self-control, learning the capabilities of those under you so you can make up for their deficits through training. What was I trained for? I am Tribal Man, thought Ender. The chief. They can trust me utterly to do exactly what's right for the tribe.
Eric
Ender's Game Chapter 9, page 149: Isolation is - the optimum environment for creativity.
Ender's Game Chapter 11, page 185-186: Partly because of Ender's influence, they were the most flexible of armies, responding relatively quickly to new situations. Phoenix Army would be the best able to cope with Ender's fluid, unpatterned attack. . . . Petra was not Carn Carby; she had more flexible patterns and responded much more quickly to Ender's darting, improvised, unpredictable attack.
Ender's Game Chapter 11, page 198: I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.
* Ender's Game Chapter 14, page 275: Ender watched as all his squadrons moved at once, each responding to its own situation, all guided by Ender's overall command, but daring, improvising, feinting, attacking with an independence no bugger fleet had ever shown.
Ender's Game Chapter 14, page 277: Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it. So, Ender, I hope you do not bore me during your training with complaints that you are not having fun. Take what pleasure you can in the interstices of your work, but your work is first, learning is first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing.
Ender's Game Chapter 15, page 309: Ender took part in the work, as much as they would let him; it did not occur to them that this twelve-year-old boy might be as gifted at peace as he was at war. But he was patient with their tendency to ignore him, and learned to make his proposals and suggest his plans through the few adults who listened to him, and let them present them as their own. He was concerned, not about getting credit, but about getting the job done.
* Ender in Exile Chapter 2, page 29: He realized that Han Tzu would take his training and turn himself into the perfect father. And much of what he had learned in Battle School and here in Command School would probably serve him well. Patience, absolute self-control, learning the capabilities of those under you so you can make up for their deficits through training. What was I trained for? I am Tribal Man, thought Ender. The chief. They can trust me utterly to do exactly what's right for the tribe.
Eric
Monday, 20 June 2011
Suggestions for Columbia ROTC
** Preface: I'll update this page if/when I can think of more. Make sure to open and read the links. My suggestions assume there is in place a baseline with an official ROTC presence located on campus and a comprehensive recruiting strategy for sophisticated public relations, tailored outreach, interaction with the campus community, and ROTC student retention. An independent campus vehicle controlled by ROTC students, such as Hamilton Society, is likely necessary to implement some of my suggestions. Organized alumni involvement is certainly necessary. **
Here are my suggestions for the designers and builders of Columbia ROTC (latest addition 19OCT11):
Make a resilient tribe.
Create a distinguished Columbia military brand. I recommend the brand be based on a distinctive preparation of Columbia ROTC students for nation building, statesmanship, and military leadership in the forward-thinking multi-talented tradition of alumnus Alexander Hamilton. Conscientiously orient CU ROTC students to military and civil leadership. Columbia ROTC should be viewed as innovative, even entrepeneurial, and creatively leveraging the resources of a large world-class university and a world capital city. Columbia ROTC graduates should understand war and the military in the context of the political (and everything else) and strategic, adaptive use of the military as a means to political ends. __ Read this Grantland article that discusses how the University of Oregon teamed with Nike to build its football program into a national leader, despite the absence of the assets relied upon by the traditionally top college football programs. Nike and the Oregon Ducks instead used modern branding and marketing techniques within the modern attention economy to construct a championship infrastructure and attract top 18-year-old football prospects (analogous to top 18-year-old officer prospects) to what had been an obscure, perenially losing program (analogous to ROTC at Columbia since the Vietnam War). That said, while Columbia ROTC is effectively a new program with clean-slate creative opportunities, the university also owns a proud military tradition reaching back to the nation's founding. The new Columbia ROTC should be both characterized by heritage and built up with innovation.
Beware of dead-end compromises that stunt the long-term growth of the program. Take heed of cautionary tales of ROTC programs that have been handicapped at peer schools, such as Dartmouth Army ROTC and Princeton Army ROTC, due to short-sighted decisions that weakened them at the foundation. Visionary leadership, careful guardianship, and zealous advocacy of Columbia ROTC are absolutely critical at the foundational beginning and should be constant over the life of the program (which should be equal to the life of the university).
Enable independent ROTC student experimentation. Within the available space allowed by formal ROTC and school commitments, ROTC on campus should enable a user-driven creative laboratory space for Columbia ROTC students. Students should control and shape that space with minimum uninvited interference: think Ender Wiggins's launchie practices and Bean's special-squad experimentation in Ender's Game. The mandated military training for CU ROTC students, and even post-ROTC military training for alumni, may fall short of teaching all the skills and perspectives that Columbians can foresee as possibly useful for the current or next generation of military leaders. CU ROTC students can regularly brainstorm with professors, milvet classmates, serving alumni, and grad-student officers about what they should innovate, teach themselves, and pull from greater CUMilComm, university, and city resources, to augment their academics and formal military training.
Keep track of important developments, influential military thinkers, and the military's own leading vision and goals, and orient Columbia ROTC accordingly. For example, see CNAS's Keeping the Edge: Revitalizing America's Military Officers Corps, AEI's UNDERSERVED A Case Study of ROTC in New York City, and Navy's A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower.
Contemplate the essence of military leadership. Columbia ROTC students should utilize Columbia's intellectual setting to glean the spirit and aesthetic of military service and officership. I don't mean a rote adoption of military ways or parroting an "Army Strong", "Navy: A Global Force for Good", "The Few, the Proud, the Marines", or "Aim High" recruiting pitch. Rather, I mean CU ROTC students should explore the deeper meaning of military leadership, similar to how other emerging practitioners delve into the deeper meaning of academia, performing arts, medicine, or the law. Service academies like West Point formally institutionalize - and heavy-handedly indoctrinate - their heritage education. In contrast, CU ROTC students have the freedom and opportunity to learn for themselves, informally, what it means to lead soldiers in the selfless (often frustrating, and at times misunderstood, thankless, and sacrificial) service of the American people and nation. They will be able to consult with milvet classmates, retired and serving military alumni, and professors with insight on the subject. As comparison, I based my design of the original MilVets logo in part on the notion of recent veterans reflecting at Columbia on the essential things from our military experiences that we would keep for our post-military lives. Beyond producing young officers who 'get it', benefits include distinguishing CU ROTC from other ROTC programs in a way that is distinct to Columbia, a better meshing of CU ROTC with Columbia's intellectual character, and shrinking the civil-military gap of social-cultural differences by building an understanding based on essential values.
Train with Parkour. The pragmatic reason is that the military ought to adopt Parkour given that we can expect future operations will continue to require maneuver in urban and other difficult built-up terrain. (Go on Youtube and check out the videos of heavily laden soldiers laboring through dense Iraqi cities and fortified compounds in the Afghan mountains that amount to cruel obstacle courses.) The training should make sense to future military leaders, be mentally and physically satisfying, and can be a shared bonding experience for all Columbia military students, especially those attending off-campus programs. Further, since it wouldn't be strictly ROTC training, the activity can also serve as gateway exposure for vigorous general-body Columbia students who may be good candidates for ROTC. NYC has a Parkour club. Columbia also has its own Parkour club (Columbia University Parkour), which was started in Fall 2010: see Spec article, Facebook page, Google group page.
Miscellaneous: Study how Peace Corps and Teach for America recruit. Enlist Columbia professors and deans who are on record supporting civics/moral/ethical education at Columbia with ROTC and work with them on concrete ideas for realizing their vision.
In general, push the Columbia ROTC experience to be more challenging and stimulating for Columbia ROTC students in sensible intelligent ways. Establish a program of special quality that can inspire respect for ROTC on campus, push CU ROTC students to learn more, and earn a better official status (e.g., academic credit) and other benefits (e.g., funding, network resources). Build up value-added ROTC+ features around the campus program. Trust that the innate quality of Columbia students will rise to the challenge, and at the same time, a reasonably challenging and stimulating program with an effective brand will attract more Columbia students to ROTC. I want student demand (ROTC applications and student interest in a military career) eventually to overwhelm the ROTC supply (available CU ROTC slots), which should further heighten student interest in ROTC and bolster the program's reputation (exclusive club effect), and pressure the military and university to increase the supply (added slots, additional ROTC programs on campus, improved access to off-campus officer programs) to meet student demand. I want the military to come to view Columbia as an active and supportive community partner, a rich vein of entrepeneurial highest-quality officer prospects, and a powerful university investing diverse resources into ROTC as unique added values.
Eric
Here are my suggestions for the designers and builders of Columbia ROTC (latest addition 19OCT11):
Make a resilient tribe.
Create a distinguished Columbia military brand. I recommend the brand be based on a distinctive preparation of Columbia ROTC students for nation building, statesmanship, and military leadership in the forward-thinking multi-talented tradition of alumnus Alexander Hamilton. Conscientiously orient CU ROTC students to military and civil leadership. Columbia ROTC should be viewed as innovative, even entrepeneurial, and creatively leveraging the resources of a large world-class university and a world capital city. Columbia ROTC graduates should understand war and the military in the context of the political (and everything else) and strategic, adaptive use of the military as a means to political ends. __ Read this Grantland article that discusses how the University of Oregon teamed with Nike to build its football program into a national leader, despite the absence of the assets relied upon by the traditionally top college football programs. Nike and the Oregon Ducks instead used modern branding and marketing techniques within the modern attention economy to construct a championship infrastructure and attract top 18-year-old football prospects (analogous to top 18-year-old officer prospects) to what had been an obscure, perenially losing program (analogous to ROTC at Columbia since the Vietnam War). That said, while Columbia ROTC is effectively a new program with clean-slate creative opportunities, the university also owns a proud military tradition reaching back to the nation's founding. The new Columbia ROTC should be both characterized by heritage and built up with innovation.
Beware of dead-end compromises that stunt the long-term growth of the program. Take heed of cautionary tales of ROTC programs that have been handicapped at peer schools, such as Dartmouth Army ROTC and Princeton Army ROTC, due to short-sighted decisions that weakened them at the foundation. Visionary leadership, careful guardianship, and zealous advocacy of Columbia ROTC are absolutely critical at the foundational beginning and should be constant over the life of the program (which should be equal to the life of the university).
Enable independent ROTC student experimentation. Within the available space allowed by formal ROTC and school commitments, ROTC on campus should enable a user-driven creative laboratory space for Columbia ROTC students. Students should control and shape that space with minimum uninvited interference: think Ender Wiggins's launchie practices and Bean's special-squad experimentation in Ender's Game. The mandated military training for CU ROTC students, and even post-ROTC military training for alumni, may fall short of teaching all the skills and perspectives that Columbians can foresee as possibly useful for the current or next generation of military leaders. CU ROTC students can regularly brainstorm with professors, milvet classmates, serving alumni, and grad-student officers about what they should innovate, teach themselves, and pull from greater CUMilComm, university, and city resources, to augment their academics and formal military training.
Keep track of important developments, influential military thinkers, and the military's own leading vision and goals, and orient Columbia ROTC accordingly. For example, see CNAS's Keeping the Edge: Revitalizing America's Military Officers Corps, AEI's UNDERSERVED A Case Study of ROTC in New York City, and Navy's A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower.
Contemplate the essence of military leadership. Columbia ROTC students should utilize Columbia's intellectual setting to glean the spirit and aesthetic of military service and officership. I don't mean a rote adoption of military ways or parroting an "Army Strong", "Navy: A Global Force for Good", "The Few, the Proud, the Marines", or "Aim High" recruiting pitch. Rather, I mean CU ROTC students should explore the deeper meaning of military leadership, similar to how other emerging practitioners delve into the deeper meaning of academia, performing arts, medicine, or the law. Service academies like West Point formally institutionalize - and heavy-handedly indoctrinate - their heritage education. In contrast, CU ROTC students have the freedom and opportunity to learn for themselves, informally, what it means to lead soldiers in the selfless (often frustrating, and at times misunderstood, thankless, and sacrificial) service of the American people and nation. They will be able to consult with milvet classmates, retired and serving military alumni, and professors with insight on the subject. As comparison, I based my design of the original MilVets logo in part on the notion of recent veterans reflecting at Columbia on the essential things from our military experiences that we would keep for our post-military lives. Beyond producing young officers who 'get it', benefits include distinguishing CU ROTC from other ROTC programs in a way that is distinct to Columbia, a better meshing of CU ROTC with Columbia's intellectual character, and shrinking the civil-military gap of social-cultural differences by building an understanding based on essential values.
Train with Parkour. The pragmatic reason is that the military ought to adopt Parkour given that we can expect future operations will continue to require maneuver in urban and other difficult built-up terrain. (Go on Youtube and check out the videos of heavily laden soldiers laboring through dense Iraqi cities and fortified compounds in the Afghan mountains that amount to cruel obstacle courses.) The training should make sense to future military leaders, be mentally and physically satisfying, and can be a shared bonding experience for all Columbia military students, especially those attending off-campus programs. Further, since it wouldn't be strictly ROTC training, the activity can also serve as gateway exposure for vigorous general-body Columbia students who may be good candidates for ROTC. NYC has a Parkour club. Columbia also has its own Parkour club (Columbia University Parkour), which was started in Fall 2010: see Spec article, Facebook page, Google group page.
Miscellaneous: Study how Peace Corps and Teach for America recruit. Enlist Columbia professors and deans who are on record supporting civics/moral/ethical education at Columbia with ROTC and work with them on concrete ideas for realizing their vision.
In general, push the Columbia ROTC experience to be more challenging and stimulating for Columbia ROTC students in sensible intelligent ways. Establish a program of special quality that can inspire respect for ROTC on campus, push CU ROTC students to learn more, and earn a better official status (e.g., academic credit) and other benefits (e.g., funding, network resources). Build up value-added ROTC+ features around the campus program. Trust that the innate quality of Columbia students will rise to the challenge, and at the same time, a reasonably challenging and stimulating program with an effective brand will attract more Columbia students to ROTC. I want student demand (ROTC applications and student interest in a military career) eventually to overwhelm the ROTC supply (available CU ROTC slots), which should further heighten student interest in ROTC and bolster the program's reputation (exclusive club effect), and pressure the military and university to increase the supply (added slots, additional ROTC programs on campus, improved access to off-campus officer programs) to meet student demand. I want the military to come to view Columbia as an active and supportive community partner, a rich vein of entrepeneurial highest-quality officer prospects, and a powerful university investing diverse resources into ROTC as unique added values.
Eric
Sunday, 19 June 2011
Sunday breakfast at the K
Sunday breakfast at the K-16 d-fac was a cherished ritual.
During my tour, a new large dining facility (aka chow hall) was completed in anticipation of the entire 17th Aviation Brigade moving to the K, but that was scheduled for after my DEROS. For us, the new d-fac was extra roomy and well-appointed by Army standards. Our cooks were friendly and the experienced Korean nationals who augmented the Army cooks added Korean flavors to the standard d-fac fare.
On Sunday mornings, the K was downright drowsy. I would dress comfortably, pick up a copy of Stars & Stripes, and saunter over to the d-fac around 10-10:30, toward the end of the scheduled breakfast. The place was nearly empty on weekends which allowed our cooks to be more relaxed. My standard Sunday breakfast included glasses of juice, a bowl of Total with 2% milk and banana chunks, a bowl of sweetened thick oatmeal, a toasted bagel with cream cheese or butter, and a mug of hot chocolate with soft-serve vanilla ice cream in place of whipped cream. I might add yogurt or fruit. The centerpiece of my Sunday breakfast was my own concoction of white rice with chopped sausage patty, omelet fixings (tomato, onion, peppers, mushrooms) the cooks were nice enough to sizzle on the griddle for me, eggs over easy, soy sauce, and a red spicy-sweet Korean sauce. Gloriously indulgent.
During the work week, I was on the Army's clock and had no time for a lavish breakfast; I ate normal meals with a soldier's speed. On Sunday, I would leisurely savor my breakfast and carefully read the newspaper front to back. An hour, hour and a half, relaxing in the d-fac was normal - I made it a point not to check the time. Only when I was satisfied I was done would I put up my tray and sated, stroll back to the barracks.
After I came home, I tried replicating my Sunday breakfast at the K. Once. It wasn't the same. Enjoy pleasure where you can find it.
Eric
During my tour, a new large dining facility (aka chow hall) was completed in anticipation of the entire 17th Aviation Brigade moving to the K, but that was scheduled for after my DEROS. For us, the new d-fac was extra roomy and well-appointed by Army standards. Our cooks were friendly and the experienced Korean nationals who augmented the Army cooks added Korean flavors to the standard d-fac fare.
On Sunday mornings, the K was downright drowsy. I would dress comfortably, pick up a copy of Stars & Stripes, and saunter over to the d-fac around 10-10:30, toward the end of the scheduled breakfast. The place was nearly empty on weekends which allowed our cooks to be more relaxed. My standard Sunday breakfast included glasses of juice, a bowl of Total with 2% milk and banana chunks, a bowl of sweetened thick oatmeal, a toasted bagel with cream cheese or butter, and a mug of hot chocolate with soft-serve vanilla ice cream in place of whipped cream. I might add yogurt or fruit. The centerpiece of my Sunday breakfast was my own concoction of white rice with chopped sausage patty, omelet fixings (tomato, onion, peppers, mushrooms) the cooks were nice enough to sizzle on the griddle for me, eggs over easy, soy sauce, and a red spicy-sweet Korean sauce. Gloriously indulgent.
During the work week, I was on the Army's clock and had no time for a lavish breakfast; I ate normal meals with a soldier's speed. On Sunday, I would leisurely savor my breakfast and carefully read the newspaper front to back. An hour, hour and a half, relaxing in the d-fac was normal - I made it a point not to check the time. Only when I was satisfied I was done would I put up my tray and sated, stroll back to the barracks.
After I came home, I tried replicating my Sunday breakfast at the K. Once. It wasn't the same. Enjoy pleasure where you can find it.
Eric
Friday, 17 June 2011
Sasuke (Ninja Warrior) and Parkour/Freerunning
Last night, SyFy aired all 10 episodes of last year's Season 2 of G4 show American Ninja Warrior, in which 10 Americans qualify to compete in Midoriyama, Japan in the popular televised competition, Sasuke (Sahs-kay) or Ninja Warrior. (Aside: It's a shame that Patrick Cusic competed in Japan instead of Richard King.) Unlike American Ninja Warrior, Sasuke isn't a knock-out tournament; rather, Sasuke competitors qualify to advance in each of 4 stages of an intense obstacle course. As with any good obstacle course, Sasuke challenges stamina, power, different areas of the body, coordination, speed, agility, and technique. The course's difficulty has been upgraded to keep pace ahead of the improvement of the competitors. There is no limit on the number of competitors allowed to qualify to advance in each stage, but in 26 seasons, only 3 competitors, all Japanese, have completed the entire obstacle course. Americans have reached as far as the Cliffhanger obstacle in the 3rd stage.
The top American Sasuke competitors are experts in Parkour/Freerunning (Freerunning is the creative version of Parkour, or Parkour is the efficient version of Freerunning), which blends acrobatics and gymnastics to sprint through obstacle courses that mimic built-up environments. Sasuke competitors add free-climbing training for fingertip and upper-body power. The most advanced Parkour practicioners, called traceurs, make full use of actual urban landscapes as their obstacle courses. As valuable as the impressive range of physical training in the sport, the mental training of the sport is just as valuable in transmuting the presumed incontrovertible restrictions of the physical environment into puzzles to master, similar in that aspect to the Army's leadership reaction courses. A great deal of flowing strategy and coordination of body and environment is involved in Parkour; it's how I imagine Batman gets around Gotham City on patrol.
I believe Parkour is a fun, challenging, healthy, and practical sport that should be widely taught to kids, in a safely padded gym of course. In addition to its multi-dimensional physical and mental rigor, the sport teaches commitment and self-discipline, self-reliance and empowerment, domain-mastery and freedom. If Parkour were to become an American national past-time, it would revolutionize our country in both body and mind.
Military basic training and PT should fully adopt Parkour, especially as we can expect for military operations to continue to take place in urban and other equally challenging terrains (see the vids of heavily laden soldiers moving around the obstacle courses that are dense Iraqi cities and steep Afghan mountains); better yet, the military should adopt Parkour with the enhanced rigor of Sasuke training.
Eric
The top American Sasuke competitors are experts in Parkour/Freerunning (Freerunning is the creative version of Parkour, or Parkour is the efficient version of Freerunning), which blends acrobatics and gymnastics to sprint through obstacle courses that mimic built-up environments. Sasuke competitors add free-climbing training for fingertip and upper-body power. The most advanced Parkour practicioners, called traceurs, make full use of actual urban landscapes as their obstacle courses. As valuable as the impressive range of physical training in the sport, the mental training of the sport is just as valuable in transmuting the presumed incontrovertible restrictions of the physical environment into puzzles to master, similar in that aspect to the Army's leadership reaction courses. A great deal of flowing strategy and coordination of body and environment is involved in Parkour; it's how I imagine Batman gets around Gotham City on patrol.
I believe Parkour is a fun, challenging, healthy, and practical sport that should be widely taught to kids, in a safely padded gym of course. In addition to its multi-dimensional physical and mental rigor, the sport teaches commitment and self-discipline, self-reliance and empowerment, domain-mastery and freedom. If Parkour were to become an American national past-time, it would revolutionize our country in both body and mind.
Military basic training and PT should fully adopt Parkour, especially as we can expect for military operations to continue to take place in urban and other equally challenging terrains (see the vids of heavily laden soldiers moving around the obstacle courses that are dense Iraqi cities and steep Afghan mountains); better yet, the military should adopt Parkour with the enhanced rigor of Sasuke training.
Eric
Thursday, 16 June 2011
US military and socialism
Nicholas Kristof, in his op-ed Our Lefty Military, makes an observation that has long been known by politically astute veterans: the US military is socialist. We even highlighted that aspect of the military in our civil-military advocacy at Columbia.
Kristof, however, leaves out four key features of the military that deter the military's socialist model from scaling up effectively to the entire nation. One, the military is bounded by strict membership standards, regulations, and population caps tied to available jobs. Two (and related to one), the military is a socio-culturally homogenous, hierarchical, even insular, tribal community, which America as a whole is not. Three (and related to one and two), military values are ascetic, austere, and selfless, unlike the drive to prosperity and other self-centered values that characterize civilian life. Team and And four, the military performs necessary services for the nation, but one fundamental thing the military does not do is generate direct economic value or capital, ie, the military does not pay for itself. A nation must be able to pay for itself.
In other words, socialism can work for the military because of its specific set of conditions, culture, and absence of need to generate capital. The same conditions, culture, and absence of need are not shared by American society at large.
I agree with Kristof (and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of the Daily Kos) generally that the military embodies important values and provides positive examples for society. I believe the Heinlein Starship Troopers notion that veterans have a great deal to offer as leaders to shepherd America in uncertain times. But I don't agree with a wholesale application of the military's socialist model to all persons and parts of the nation. The costs and benefits calculation of socialism for and within the military is not the same as the costs and benefits calculation of socialism for the entire nation.
Moreover, applying a militaristic socialist template has been tried on a mass scale already. Mao Ze-Dong, likely motivated by the same admiration for the military's team culture, attempted to remake China with a militaristic socialist template. It didn't work.
Military service is right for men culturally. Veterans who have internalized military values and live by, lead using, and teach those values are good for society. But - big but - imposing a militaristic socialist template onto all of a large diverse nation with different cultures and conditions, while an attractive idea for many progressives, has not worked.
Eric
Kristof, however, leaves out four key features of the military that deter the military's socialist model from scaling up effectively to the entire nation. One, the military is bounded by strict membership standards, regulations, and population caps tied to available jobs. Two (and related to one), the military is a socio-culturally homogenous, hierarchical, even insular, tribal community, which America as a whole is not. Three (and related to one and two), military values are ascetic, austere, and selfless, unlike the drive to prosperity and other self-centered values that characterize civilian life. Team and And four, the military performs necessary services for the nation, but one fundamental thing the military does not do is generate direct economic value or capital, ie, the military does not pay for itself. A nation must be able to pay for itself.
In other words, socialism can work for the military because of its specific set of conditions, culture, and absence of need to generate capital. The same conditions, culture, and absence of need are not shared by American society at large.
I agree with Kristof (and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of the Daily Kos) generally that the military embodies important values and provides positive examples for society. I believe the Heinlein Starship Troopers notion that veterans have a great deal to offer as leaders to shepherd America in uncertain times. But I don't agree with a wholesale application of the military's socialist model to all persons and parts of the nation. The costs and benefits calculation of socialism for and within the military is not the same as the costs and benefits calculation of socialism for the entire nation.
Moreover, applying a militaristic socialist template has been tried on a mass scale already. Mao Ze-Dong, likely motivated by the same admiration for the military's team culture, attempted to remake China with a militaristic socialist template. It didn't work.
Military service is right for men culturally. Veterans who have internalized military values and live by, lead using, and teach those values are good for society. But - big but - imposing a militaristic socialist template onto all of a large diverse nation with different cultures and conditions, while an attractive idea for many progressives, has not worked.
Eric
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
Cat puppy video
Patient-cat-with-rambunctious-puppy videos are addictively cute, but this one ends on a not-so-cute cliffhanger:
The video's cuteness is maxed out by the cat acting exceptionally patient and gentle with the puppy - at first. The cat even appears to lick the puppy's face affectionately after first pushing the puppy away. But what happened after the video? The cat's bite looks to be bearing down on the puppy's throat and the puppy's whining and scuffling seems to show real distress. Did the cat follow up the throat bite like a mother disciplining her naughty beloved kitten or an instinctive feline predator with the life-blood and breath of helpless prey in her jaws?
By the way, the music playing in the background is "Teardrop" by Massive Attack.
Eric
The video's cuteness is maxed out by the cat acting exceptionally patient and gentle with the puppy - at first. The cat even appears to lick the puppy's face affectionately after first pushing the puppy away. But what happened after the video? The cat's bite looks to be bearing down on the puppy's throat and the puppy's whining and scuffling seems to show real distress. Did the cat follow up the throat bite like a mother disciplining her naughty beloved kitten or an instinctive feline predator with the life-blood and breath of helpless prey in her jaws?
By the way, the music playing in the background is "Teardrop" by Massive Attack.
Eric
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