MBM, Black, Bright and Bathes.....

...seeks nomination for President.

It's not hard being a black man in America. One need only cover ones tail, shave the horns, go light on ones association with white chicks, and bathe.

Being articulate is a plus.

Delta Charlie Poli's say the oddest things.

So my wife and I are finally catching the movie "Flyboys." They're in the training phase. The flight training sequence is quaint. But that's the way it was. Homebrew technology, put in the service of war.

Comes around, goes around, I guess.

I'm beginning to look forward to Wednesdays, hump day, like never before. Two days until relaxation, core dump and extended sleep.

Funny thing, since starting my new job at SaltMineSaltCorp, inc, I've had less time to read blogs. Basically less than two hours a day, now. This is not a digg on blogs, just an observation.

It's fun having known unknowns.

I tell you, open society/source is going to kick my ass.

Stealing a toy:

This picture on EU Referendum reminds me of my post below, on the JTLV.




Thing about the French, often missed. In addition to great cuisine, they produce world class soldiers. That the Metropolitan is corrupt, and the Code Napoleon a dead end, does not detract from my observations.

Bimbo Eruptions

If you're of a certain age, you may recall newslines like this: "such and such was attacked/bombed/assasinated by a previously unknown group known as [insert name here]." Then, you never heard from the group again.

And if you did, they were called an offshoot, or, for purposes of respectability, an "armed wing."

Whatever.

In Najaf, we recently witnessed something of the same.

A Bimbo Eruption.

Likely to see more.

I tried to hold out for cybernetic augmentation..

I mean, it's just around the corner, right?

Alas, I'm finally going to breakdown and go in for PRK on my eyes.

Not having to wear glasses is pretty exciting. Seeing a pair of cool sunglasses and buying them. Wearing sunglasses, and not having to carry around a pair of glasses. Non steel-reinforced peripheral vision.

Cybernetic eyes would have been cool, but I got tired of waiting.

Smart Mobs....

You know, I've always hated mobs. I don't know why.



Recently, cell phones featured in a school fight in Wisconsin:

MILWAUKEE - School brawls have gone high tech, with students using cell phones to call in reinforcements - in one case requiring police and pepper spray to break up a fight that swelled to about 20 family members on Milwaukee school grounds.

Handy's are great mobilizers of mobs. A call here, a group text message there. Meetups can be arranged by social networks like myspace, blogs and chat groups.

The only thing smart, here, is the technology employed. At the end of the day, you've still got a dumb mob. And mobs are ruled by he who yells the loudest.

There's a certain anonymity in mobs. This is not a dig on anonymity, by the way. I'm not irony challenged. But the anonymity afforded by the mob almost always, without exception, leads to bad outcomes. Rarely are great inventions, good books and art developed in a mob.

Mob are designed, almost genetically, to break and smash stuff.

Count the number of one man riots, where a lone mobster smashes a McDonald's window or makes off with a TV.

So, I'm always going back to a Digital Moses, of sorts. He's the guy who gets us to the promised land, and as the tribe is about to cross in, says, "Whoa. Hold up, folks."

I am, of course, referring to Jaron Lanier.




He's one of those voices in the wilderness (cheerfully mixing metaphores, here) I like to listen too. The other county heard from.

His piece, Digital Maoism points out some of the dust bunnies in the living room of Our Shinny New World.

We're trending to a world that is, at least in part, more open, in both society and source.

Me, I like sketching out where that goes bad. Can't all be upside.

At some point, that mob we develop is going to turn around and bite us in the ass.

While "no man is an Island, entire unto himself", all men don't need to become the continent. You'll always need somewhere to run. So, we'll always need islands.

Got to go.

Rome is on.

Landships

H.G. Wells, like that Heinlein guy, wrote science fiction that last. One of his shorts was The Land Ironclads, a story that laid the ground work for the modern tank.



Now, scale that sucker down, and you've basically got the WWI tank.

Military technology is all about tit for tat. Body armor started going out of vogue with the longbow. Plates were replaced by mail, but that was a stop gap. The rifled bullet pretty much ended any experiment with armor. From that point forward, "armor" was essentially flak protection. Then, along came kevlar.

A better helmet is created. Today, we have the SAPI (Small Arms Insert Plates) inside kevlar coats and called Individual Body Armor. Add some groin protection, throat protection, deltoid armor protection and that funky gunners helmet and you're back to looking like one of those knights in shiny armor. Digitized.

H.G. Well's Landships kinda went the same way. From WWI tanks to the M1 Abrams. The M1A2 is 60 tonne behemoth. Fast and lethal. But you know what? They get blown up also. Matter of physics. You can make a vehicle resistant to, say, 500kg of explosives. The vehicle gets destroyed, but the crew survives. Good outcome, right? But the enemy, well he's no idjiot, so for his next bomb, he plants 510kg of explosives.

Tat.

There's an upper limit to the effectiveness of up armoring. We've reached that, and you see it in anti IED operations. Instead of defeating the bombs, the focus is on defeating the bomb makers. So why all the steel?

War is as much about competing systems, as it is individual weapons or tactics. Best system wins. But that's beyond this post.

Here's the M4 Carbine.



You may have seen them before, in the hands of Rangers and SOF types, Infantry and the like. Surprisingly, they were originally designed for logisticians; 88M, 92Y, 68W types who spent a lot of time entering and exiting vehicles on the linear battlefield. Thinking was, foreshortened, they'd be easier to handle than the M-16.

Then along came the SOF, who liked the weapon, and adopted it, along with the wider Infantry community. Now, you see them everywhere. From the base model to ones tricked out with grenade launchers, widescreen TVs, iPods and can openers.

So back to the land ironclads.

If we are in a long war, then the model for conflict will be more like Afghanistan than Irak. Shadow wars in the nooks and crannies (if Thomas P.M. Barnett is right about the CHICOMS).

Bradleys and Abrams have large footprints and long tails. The Army introduced the Stryker variants which have performed surprisingly well. But the Stryker is an interim vehicle, a stop gap along the way to the Future Combat System, a family of vehicles powered by hope and able to shoot dreams. Sexy stuff. Problem is funding priorities. It might not get built.



(looks like an elongated Dalek: EXTERMINATEEXTERMINATEEXTERMINATE!!!)

Now, there's the issue of the HUMVEE, which is about at the end of it's useful life. Sit in one, lurching along with armor, FBCB2 cramping you, limited side visibility...well, you get the point.

So the Navy's decided to put out for bid the Joint Tactical Light Vehicle ('Joint' is a way of saying, give us more money) to outfit their Marines.

Well, Generally Dynamic has stepped forward with a, there's that word again, "family of vehicles" for the JTLV.

Looks something like this:







As a REMF mobile, probably won't get the "attention" it deserves, which means it will probably come in under budget, and work. REMF work is decidedly unsexy. Only necessary.

So, somewhere along the time the FCS disappears in a poof of competing priorities, someone will take a gander at the JTLV, rip out the BCS3, stuff in a FBCB2, MCS-Lite, CPOF, ABCD, XYZ, mount a rail gun and go to town.

Like the M4 Carbine.

At least, that would be my guess.

Among the most obvious things.

An Open Letter to Prime Minister Maliki, Irak:

Dear Mister Prime Minister,

I am writing this letter to express my extreme disappointment in your behaviour, to date, as the Prime Minister of Iraq. Your failures, as a leader, a man, and chordate have been legion.

Let me be clear. I hold you, you, singularly responsible for the strife, turmoil and bloodshed currently roiling the talkshow circuit, the halls of congress and the confab in davos. You don't seem to realize, or don't seem to care, that every time an IED explodes in your country, some spending initiative, some bipartisan proposal, some earmarked proposal dies a little.

Mr. Maliki, I am responsible to the citizens of my great state to ensure the rapid and frequent influx of sweet lucre. Your failure to lock down your nation and get it off my list of talking points represents a clear and present danger to my ability to conduct business as usual.

Now, I understand that irresponsible persons in our government have led you to believe that freedom and liberty is achievable and desirable. It is not. As the violence on your streets show, when the cork is removed, the yobs behave like, well, yobs. In this, you have my sympathy. The violence you see everyday is replicated everyday on the streets of America, with it's rampant gun culture, and the refusal of her citizens to STFU before the Great and the Wise.

Mr. Maliki, you have ONE MORE CHANCE.

That is why I am authorizing my speech writer to conduct a SURGE of talking points. Mr. Maliki, you need to embrace a political solution to this crisis. You need to reach out, to all six or seven sides of this sectarian (as declared boldly by NBC) Civil War. You need to engage the Al Qods forces currently operating in Baghdad and the Diyala province. You need to bring them to the table, and discuss their need to shoot down US helicopters, conduct raids in Kerbala and import weapons into your country. After all, their ultimate target is the Zionist Entity, not you. Irak is a merely a road bump to their regional ambitions. Help them smooth that road bump, Mr. Maliki. Help Snowden.

Then you need to stretch your hands wide, and reach out to the Sunni's in Anbar, and ask them why they feel the need to detonate car bombs in markets. Is it, perhaps, because of something you've down? Ask them this, Mr. Maliki, ask them this.

Then look south, Mr Maliki, look south into the orphaned eyes of Mookie Al Sadr, and embrace his pain. Is it any surprise that this young man, almost a youth, orphaned so young, feels the need to surround himself with playmates, whom you dismissively refer to as a militia?

Mr Maliki, if you were a student of history, as I am (holding several honorary Doctorates) you would understand that it is only through rhetoric, cleverly, and forcefully employed, that peace and freedom can be achieved. History, as it were, is made by the snarky, irreverent and unserious.

Let there be no doubt of this.

So put down your long sword, and pick up your long pen, Mr Maliki.

Signed,

A. Dick

The Good Earth

If you were not afflicted with a postmodern education, you may have read Pearl S. Buck's book, The Good Earth.

Let me paraphrase the line, consistent throughout the book: "first generation coolie, second generation rich, third generation spends, fourth generation coolies."

Mrs. Buck (not wild) describes the rise and fall of peasant family in pre-collectivist China.

The Good Earth, in her book, refers to a peoples connection to the land, to the solidity of something real.

People straying far from the good earth, fail. For me, that good earth has always meant ideas. Stray far from them, and you are the fourth generation...coolies.

Reminds me of Europe.

I like reading the Brussels Journal. I like checking in on a place I lived so long. BJ, along with a couple of other sites, let's me keep tabs. In addition, they are prone to those longish post which leave me wanting to respond: "yeah, what they said."

Europe.

I was able to live in Europe without picking up any bad ideas (multiculturalism, arrogance or a second language), and I still do love the old girl.

The Good Earth.

So the Brussels Journal post On Fascism and Islamophobia.

See, here's my thing. People go on and on about intentions and good ideas. "Shave the Whales", "Tofu in every pot, and iPod in every hand", "Low Carbon emissions for the people", and a "Grand Caliph and Theme Park for the Masses." O.K. Got it. So?

There are good ideas and there are bad ideas.

People tend to adopt good ideas without much prodding. "Come inside out of the rain," for example. Bad ideas, however, tend to require a champion.

That gets us to methodologies.

Tyrants, to paraphrase Hayek, eat from the same bowl. Fascism, Nazism, Communism, Collectivism, crude Nationalism, nihilistic Internationalism, political Islamism?

Lame ideas, same methodologies.

We do ourselves a disservice by focusing on the minutiae of the tyrant's particular grievance, and forgetting that he's employing tried and true methodologies.

Which brings us, in a way, to our current crisis.

The Jihad would be a joke, if we didn't act like such fools, and recognize them for what they are.

Alas.

Maybe next time around, we'll know better, and rather than a wringing of hands and a gnashing of teeth, our (freemen) response will be simple, succinct, and on point:

Sic Semper, Bitches.

Alas. That's for the future.

A bloody night, indeed....

At least by homeland standards. Veal cutlets, done up in a red wine sauce, some vegetables. Followed by Natalie Mendoza, in The Descent.

A bloody night, indeed.

Cell phone camera's have a long way to go. Had a couple of good pictures I thought I'd post.

The second one was typical: a bumper sticker saying "Support Locally Grown Food, Shop the Coop", in, of course, the parking lot of our local MegaGlobalCorp Grocery Store.

The first one was a little harder to explain:

"Satan=faith. Death is hell. Long life, and wellness." and on the side, "To believe is to die."

Or something like that.

I live in a land of bumperstickers, so I'm generally not surprised by what I see, but this guy took the cake. He didn't ave a bumpersticker, he had signs, nailed front and back, to his car.

As to his message, I have no idea. Radical Transhumanism?

No good pics, tho. I blame camera phones. They suck. Sorry.

Natalie Mendoza, before The Descent.

Sometimes you get lucky:

My wife's sitting downstairs, using her iBook, when the damn battery goes "poof" and starts smoking.

She executes a flawless battledrill, unplugs the thing and brings it upstairs to me. Fortunately, not much harm, not much foul. Took the battery out, and noticed an odd smell, but little else.

Computer still work, sans battery. So, do I get her a new battery (129 dracma) or simply wait a month or two and drop for a new MacBook?

Think we'll go with the MacBook.

I've always wanted to dissasemble an iBook.

The coalition you have:

"Pragmatists say that a flawed trial is better than none and that there is no choice but to proceed with the tribunal you have rather than the tribunal you may wish to have."

From Best of the Web. (I'll update the link when I can figure out how to permalink)

As mentioned before, the merging of operational and homestation language is a little ball of shiny tinfoil which gives me hours of pleasure. How long before:

"Honey, let's let a sitter detain the kids, and let's you and I get out of the F.O.B. and do a little no knock raids downtonwn, and when we get home, put the kids in gitmo and do a little clear and hold ourselves?"

O.K. Maybe not.

One of the small pleasures of my job is the ability to it, and think contemplatively about the larger issues of the day. Technically referred to as "shooting the shit."

So I was having this conversation. Basically, my right hand man was saying that, pace 911, the Muslim were treated badly in America. Really? I asked him for a case. Besides the idjiot killing the beturbaned Sikh post 911, I couldn't recall a case. He mentioned that he'd been on a plane, there were some Muslims on it, and people looked, hold yourself, cross eyed at them.

See. That bothers me.

Look, if in, say, 1962, twenty black men had hijacked four planes full of white chicks and crashed them into the tallest buildings Birmingham, Alabama and Atlanta, Georgia, I'm thinking the reaction would have been a little bit, um, stringent. Maybe even a lynching or two. Certainly something beyond the cross eyed glance.

Am I saying the reaction would have been right? Of course not. But to compare the hurt feelings of Phobia pimps like the Council on American Islamic Relations and actual, real oppression by this country in the past is, in my mind, laughable.

Feel bad? Tough. Here's a quarter. Buy a hug.

America has the distinction of being best served by those whom she has abused the most. I'm thing of the 10th CAV (Buffalo Soldiers) on San Juan Hill, the Tuskegee Airman over Europe, the Japanese Nisei assaulting Sicily, the Irish Beat Cop and the Italian Lawyer. It has been, throughout her history, the job of the American oppressed to redeem her better qualities.

That's just the way it is.

Cross eyed.

So a guy I never heard of, on a show I've never watched, is entering therapy for calling a castmate a faggot.

Man, that's wrong.

Here's my take on the subject:

"Dude, you're a faggot."

"Look man, go fuck yourself. Or better yet, I'll do it to you. Bitch."

Crude? Yes, but effective. Instead, we have this self exposed idjiot going into therapy. Getting his mind right, no doubt, on his failure to communicate (too much). And the victim, he makes the talk show tour.

GMAFB!

Cross eyed.

It's what happens when feelings trump facts, and emotion is mistaken for courage.

UPDATE: Egg on the face. Reading down the story, I see that some Quaker School attending beat up some Palestinians and called them terrorists. One of three things:

1. Dustup among kids, blown out of proportion.
2. A Hamas meeting, gone overlong, and interfering with a preplanned kegger.
3. Or some dicks.

Since it was reported in the "noos", I'll withhold judgement, until more surfaces.

Liking this:

Back in the day, I used to buy the International Herald Tribune on a daily basis. That' when it was selling for about a buck ten. Then, the price went up to about a buck thirty five, around the same time I figured I could read it online.

Stopped buying.

Newsweek and the Economist lasted a bit longer. I dutifully, weekly, transferred wealth to them for the Product of Ideas. Problem was, the innernet kept speeding up, and information just came pouring out.

So now, I get most of my information from the innernet, or Earl, the Undocumented Canadian who does my lawn.

It's not that I'm unwilling to buy, it's just that I live in a world were, well, a weekly seems dated. I always thought of weeklies as places of sober reflections. Silly me.

But I'm glad to see the e.e. conomist using clouds on their free exchange blog.

I'll look forward to this experiment. Put the opinion in the clouds, and give me the hard news in the weekly.

I'll buy that for a dollar.

The Tribe Gathers...

My wife and I have good friends. The problem is that they're scattered over two continents. Our nearest friend is about two states east, and one state down, or there abouts.

Probably has something to do with my definition of friends. They have to be kidney worthy.

By and large, our friends are. The kind of folks you'd slide some money, pick up from jail, or swear in a court of law that no sir, no way, that's not them on that convenience store video.

Salt of the earth.

We stay together by email, post and the occasion (wish you were here) jealousy call.

The last time we were together, en mass, was back in September. We we're celebrating a friends return from Europe. He was the best man at my wedding and a buddy I crossed the Rubicon with (really).

Well, two mutual friends are getting hitched, and my wife and I are going.

The tribe gathers.

I know I'm going to run into one buddy. Last time I saw him and his wife was at the Christening of their son. We drove across a (medium sized) country to get there.

He and I are on opposite ends of the opinion meter. He's a deluded, naive, pollyannish, collectivist freak. I'm a blood soaked, kill 'em all, "murder was the name that they gave me", type of guy.

Man, we argue, and have been arguing, since sometime around December 2002.

I feel like I've been whacking that mole longer than John Henry.

So, instead of being in the defensive mode, I've got to figure out some questions to ask him. Things that keep my noggin active. Simple questions:

1. Is life, no matter how lived, the highest value?
2. Do the free have obligations to the unfree?
3. Does cowardice have a price?
4. How do we overcome fear?
5. Are different systems compatible?

I like to list things in five. Ten is too hard to remember. Figure I'll ask him these, or some variation thereof.

Then let the yelling begin. Hopefully, after the vows.

But you know what, it's all good. Because at the end of the day, we're still Brothers.

Still kidney worthy. Way it ought to be.

Hehehehehe....

heh, heh, heh, heh:

The Crumbs also wanted to shield their daughter, Sophie, from a growing conservative and fundamentalist Christian influence while continuing to educate her in what they consider the classics. They reared her on “Little Lulu” comics from the 1940s and ’50s and Three Stooges videos.

Hahahahahaha. The "classics?" That was a joke, right.

Maybe not.

Oh well.

My new creed: live what you want, do what you want, but don't think you've solved the New Model Man conundrum.

The Best of the Worst....

China Rising.

It's a consistent theme, recently. China, the Rising Dragon. Got it. China, the Next Superpower. Yep. China, It's Not Just Takeout, Anymore. Sure.

So it was weird to see this Ad by Alberto VO5 cross the t.v. waves:



My wife, who grew up under the Soviet Union says it reminded her of school. Tyranny. It's the one size fits all philosophy.

(One day, I'll figure out how to embed youtube. Can't be that hard.)

So, Mark Steyn, Christopher Hitchens and a three legged midget walk into a bar.

Sorry, no punchline, on account of there's no joke (well, except the part about the three legged midget.)

Hitchens reviews Steyn's book, America Alone.

This post is about impressions.

I'm a fan of both Hitchens and Steyn. I like going over to Hitchens place, because he sets a table of the finest sacred cow. I like Steyn because his deserts seem all fluff and sweetness, but when you take a bite, you think "ah, this was the meal!!"

Hitchens reviews Steyn.

Both men come from opposite ends (by current definitions) of the Divide (TM), but are actually of the same place.

Hitchens. Atheist. Secularist. Humanist. Writer.

Steyn. Believer in Christ. Father. Populist Demographer. Writer.

Both men are most sober in thought. Both men, unfortunately, are coming closer to closer in thought.

Yeah, about the current crisis.

Hitchens, emerging from a nightmare. Steyn, peering into one.

Autocide of the "West"?

Hitchens, the optimistic pessimist and Steyn, the pessimistic optimists.

Again, this post is about impressions. Nothing to see here.

I do find it funny, however, that both of them are furry foreigners. Exiles from Commonwealth. Both men are able to see, identify and explain a problem. Eloquently.

I'll keep that in mind, tomorrow, when Chip, who collects my garbage, announces on his website his intention to run for President.

The thing I like most about my serene republic, the thing I love, is that it is an idea not bound by borders. Or birth. It is before all, about attitude.

Again, this post is about impressions.