Google wants to know everything about you

30. May 2007 · Comments Off on Google wants to know everything about you · Categories: General

Or

I, for one, welcome our new bithead overlords.

Eric Schmidt said

“The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’?”

How? Gathering personal data from everywhere. Which is not hard – most of us leave tracks all over the infosphere*, most of it just sitting there. Do you know how to encrypt email? What about using onion routing to mask your IP address? And for the love of God if you use onion routing do you know that some programs leak data to DNS servers to establish the onion route?

If the infosphere were a forest most of us are loud rubes from the city, gawking and tromping all over the place, being loud and scaring off game for a country mile. Bird watchers and fishermen are wincing as we come tromping by, wishing you’d just get back in your Winnebago and go away. It was nice before you showed up and it will be nicer once you leave.

But .. Google. Personal data in the hands of the unscrupulous is double-plus un-good.

After all, here we have a corporation whose executive are not publicly elected, whose activities are not subject to any form of public oversight, and who chose – not reluctantly, but enthusiastically and without the slightest complaint – to comply with censorship in China. To be honest, I’d probably trust the government more with the kind of information that Google wants to amass under the flimsy excuse of helping me find information and services I know how to find perfectly well already, thank you.

As an aside – where you stand on this depends on how you feel about government. Which in turn might depend on how recently you’ve been goosed by it. But I digress.

I don’t want to get too deeply into this but it’s worth noting that while we don’t elect executives in Google neither do we elect the executives in our government. We elect the guys who are in charge who in turn hire the guys who are running things. We elect the CEO. Get a layer or two down and the guys who actually run the government are pretty much just like the guys who run Google.

That’s not where I was going with this.

Transparent Society

David Brin speculated that cameras would soon be everywhere, would be networked and capture our public moments. Getting down to the bedrock issue here, we get down to a who watches the watcher problem. We have two ways of living in this future;

* The cops (The Man, John Law) monitor the cameras. Recordings are kept by them, for their use.

or

* There is no Monitor Central. The feed from the cameras is tossed into the ether for anyone to view.

I’m paraphrasing this badly – Brin is a writer and he does a much better job of this. Go read the article if you have not already done so.

Where we’re at is that this is not a deal you can stop. The cameras are coming. Our only choice is to have a society where the cameras are controlled by John Law or by no one at all. It’s that stark.

Here is the problem, and where Brin’s lovely thought experiment fails; cameras are mounted, paid for and installed not by a bunch of grubby hackers but by the Laws. Would your average bureaucrat just hand over data?

I won’t hold my breath.

Where I’m Going With This

You probably saw this coming a mile away. Is the man collecting data on you? If we are tromping through the infosphere like tourists from the city then our tracks in a thousand government databases are fossilized footprints. You’re known about a thousand different ways from Sunday.

Integration of all these databases will happen. Call it empire building or ‘but the people paid for this data they have a right to good data’** or a well-intentioned effort to thwart the pressing crisis of the day … it will be slow and expensive but it will happen.

Google is plowing forward with the same plans – but with a million sources of data that are not controlled by the State.  They’re doing it better and faster.

What Google – and a thousand scruffy hackers who want to be the next Google – are up to can be seen not as evil or even bad but an effort to build a public feed of data. Transparent Society Version 2.0.

Intentioned or not this is an effort to construct a better place to live than the one we’ll get if we do nothing.***

On the one side is that massive data integration by the State – and if you think you’ll see much data from that, you’ll be waiting a long time. On the flip side all the other data, just put out there for people to use. The State’s default mode is to hide everything, Google’s is to put it out there for everyone to use.

I know which society I’d prefer to live in.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

*I use this not in the way that a learned policy wonk would so he can up his fee for a speaking gig but in a mock-ironic sense. In fact assume that all consultant and wonk talk above is used in this sense.

** Hat-tip to Ellen Ullman.

*** Or not.

Daily Brief readers, I thank you for you indulgence. This is not your normal mil-blog deal and if you’re read this far you’re a champ and I appreciate it. That or you are wondering if I have lost my mind and you were reading this in the same sense that some people watch NASCAR i.e. for the car crashes.

Memorial Day

28. May 2007 · Comments Off on Memorial Day · Categories: General

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Let’s not forget why we have this day off, ok? Take a moment today, in the midst of your fun, and remember those who’ve given everything they had so that we might live in freedom.

Thanks 🙂

Be Vewy, Vewy Quiet….

27. May 2007 · Comments Off on Be Vewy, Vewy Quiet…. · Categories: General, Good God, GWOT, Iraq, Media Matters Not, War

The mainstream media is hunting torturers… but only if it’s Americans doing the torturing. If Al Qaeda’s torture manuel just happens to be found, just lying around?

Quick, do another story about Abu Ghraib, or Guantanamo… something, quick!

I found this link to the manuel, as posted on “The Smoking Gun” yesterday through The Belmont Club. I thought I’d rather wait twenty-four hours, before posting it here. Please be warned, it is really nasty. But it puts the whole question of torture of the detainees at Guantanamo rather in a different light.

For Memorial Day-

27. May 2007 · Comments Off on For Memorial Day- · Categories: Domestic, General, History, War, World

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Just because…

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Just seemed to be especially relevent, this Memorial Day.

Dangerous Book For Boys

26. May 2007 · Comments Off on Dangerous Book For Boys · Categories: General

Last night was payday and the boys get to pick up a new book. Older Monkey is twelve; he was dithering over two books – a new addition to a young-adult series he’s been reading or this: Dangerous Book For Boys. He opted for the latter and I am quite pleased by his purchase.

Topics in DBFB? Famous Battles. Invisible ink. Latin phrases every boy should know. How to make a trip wire. How to make an electro-magnet. The Declaration of Independence. How to play poker. Girls. Girls?

You may already have noticed that girls are quite different from you. By this, we do not mean the physical differences, more the fact that they remain unimpressed by your mastery of a game involving wizards, or your understanding of Morse code. some will be impressed, of course, but as a general rule, girls do not get quite as excited by the use of urine as a secret ink as boys do.

Which is, sadly, true. I would have avoided a whole lotta marital strife if I’d learned this sooner than I did.

It reads like the Boy Scout Manual would if the editors had gotten their way and included the really good bits as well as the stuff BSA requires. Older Monkey spent an hour this evening making a tripwire using two AA batteries, wire salvaged from two dead fans and a light bulb. Of note is that he started using the directions and then strayed off using his own design. Which doesn’t quite work and led to learning how to troubleshoot electrical circuits and … more fundamentally .. learning troubleshooting techniques and stuff like .. logic.

Highly recommended.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Weekly Update

25. May 2007 · Comments Off on Weekly Update · Categories: Critters, Domestic, General, That's Entertainment!, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Ok, so this is one of those sort of weeks… although I did get a dividend check from the auto insurance company; a paltry sum but actually very welcome nonetheless, and another agent sent the usual SASE reply saying she is intrigued and can I send her the Whole Entire Manuscript, Please…getting a print of all 336 pages and mailing it will still happen in something less than toot-suite time, and probably cost the whole of the dividend check! Well, things happen for a purpose, I guess.

William is here, a week before I was really expecting and ready for him, missing his flight last night… which I only found out about after I had been waiting at the airport for an hour, this after putting in three hours putting together some brochures for the current occasional employer, the worlds tallest ADHD child. So, out of bed at four AM, doing four circuits of the airport pick-up area; honestly, if I weren’t so fond of him and if it hadn’t been so long since he was here last, I would have just told him to get his ass into a taxi at the airport and I’d have breakfast ready by the time he got to the house.

And I have to re-write the Hot Wells article, it just didn’t suit the editor… but I think I have racked up bonus points for being agreeable about re-writing I was complimented on being completely professional about the criticism… which inclines me to think that a lot of the other writers must be… I don’t know; high maintenance? Prima Donna? Temperamental, even? Eh… if you are paying me enough for bespoke word-smithing, temperament is something I can’t afford to indulge in.

I was worried about Spike the Shi-tzu, AKA the Poop Factory for a couple of days, too. Plenty of input… no observable output. Given that every disgusting thing she comes across goes straight into her mouth, I was afraid it was only a matter of time until she ingested something that would expensively obstruct the old alimentary canal. Not to worry, though. The evidence of normal digestive function was fresh on the doormat last night. The smell of it would have gagged a buzzard, though. (What does that little wretch eat? And do I really want to know?)

I am sure that Spike was the one who dragged Williams boxer-shorts out into the living room around mid morning and left them on the sofa. Blondie to me; “Jeeze, Mom, can you consider that I live here too?” She only rolled her eyes when I said Spike must have dragged them in. From the pile of laundry that William carelessly left on the floor.

Wrote up a book review, over at BNN… is anyone reading me at all this week, or is it just my imagination?

Carnival of Space #4

24. May 2007 · Comments Off on Carnival of Space #4 · Categories: General

Carnival of Space #4 is up. And there was much rejoicing.

The good folks there were kind enough to link to this entry at The Daily Brief.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

The Long Hot Summer of 1860

22. May 2007 · Comments Off on The Long Hot Summer of 1860 · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Media Matters Not, Old West, Politics, Technology

The summer of 1860 culminated a decade of increasingly bitter polarization among the citizens of the still-United States over the question of slavery, or as the common polite euphemism had it; “our peculiar institution”. At a period within living memory of older citizens, slavery once appeared as if it were something that would wither away as it became less and less profitable, and more and more disapproved of by practically everyone. But the invention of the cotton gin, to process cotton fiber mechanically made large-scale agricultural production profitable, relighting the fire under a moribund industry. The possibility of permitting the institution of chattel slavery in the newly-acquired territories in the West during the 1840s turned the heat up to a simmer. It came to a full rolling boil after California was admitted as a free state in 1850… but at a cost of stiffening the Fugitive Slave Laws. And as a prominent senator, Jesse Hart Benton lamented subsequently, the matter of slavery popped up everywhere, as ubiquitous as the biblical plague of frogs. Attitudes hardened on both sides, and within a space of a few years advocates for slavery and abolitionists alike had all the encouragement they needed to readily believe the worst of each other.

Texas was not immune to all this, of course. Of the populated western states at the time, Texas was closer in sympathy to the South in the matter of slavery. Most settlers who come from the United States had come from where it had been permitted, and many had brought their human property with them, or felt no particular objection to the institution itself. In point of fact, slaves were never particularly numerous: the largest number held by a single Texas slave-owner on the eve of the Civil War numbered around 300, and this instance was very much a singular exception; most owned far fewer. Only a portion of the state was favorable to the sort of mass-agricultural production that depended upon a slave workforce. In truth while there were few abolitionists, there were many whose enthusiasm for the practice of chattel slavery was particularly restrained especially in those parts of North Texas, which had been settled from northern states and around the Hill Country and San Antonio, similarly settled by Germans and other Europeans.

One of the subtle and tragic side-effects that the hardening of attitudes had on the South was to intensify the “closing-in” of attitudes and culture towards contrary opinions. As disapproval of slavery heightened in the North and in Europe, Southern partisans became increasingly defensive, less inclined to brook any kind of criticism of the south and its institutions, peculiar or otherwise. By degrees the South became inimical to outsiders bearing the contrary ideas that progress is made of. Those who were aware of the simple fact that ideas, money, innovation, and new immigrants were pouring into the Northern states at rates far outstripping those into the South tended to brood resentfully about it, and cling to their traditions ever more tightly. Always touchy about points of honor and insult, some kind of nadir was reached in 1854 on the floor of the US Senate when a Southern Senator, Preston Brooks of South Carolina caned Charles Sumner following a fiercely abolitionist speech by the latter. Senator Brooks was presented with all sorts of fancy canes to commemorate the occasion, while Senator Sumner was months recovering from the brutal beating.

And even more than criticism, Southerners feared a slave insurrection, and any whisper of such met with a hard and brutal reaction. John Brown’s abortive 1859 raid on the Federal armory at Harper’s Ferry sealed the conviction into the minds of Southerners that the abolitionists wished for exactly that.

When mysterious fires razed half of downtown Denton, parts of Waxahatchie, a large chunk of the center of Dallas, and a grocery store in Pilot Point during the hottest summer in local memory, it took no great leap of imagination for anti-abolitionists to place blame for mysterious fires squarely on the usual suspects and their vile plots. Residents were especially jumpy in Dallas, where two Methodist preachers had been publicly flogged and thrown out of town the previous year. The editor of the local Dallas newspaper, one Charles Pryor wrote to the editors of newspapers across the state, (including the editor of the Austin Gazette who was chairman of the state Democratic Party) claiming “It was determined by certain abolitionist preachers, who were expelled from the country last year, to devastate, with fire and assassination, the whole of Northern Texas, and when it was reduced to a helpless condition, a general revolt of slaves, aided by the white men of the North in our midst, was to come off on the day of election in August.”

The panic was on, then, all across Texas: Committees of Public Safety were formed, as so-called abolitionist plotters were sought high, low, and behind every privy and under every bed, and lynched on the slightest suspicion. Conservative estimates place the number of dead, both black and white as at least thirty and possibly up to a hundred, while the newspapers breathlessly poured fuel on the fires… metaphorically speaking, of course… by expounding on the cruel depredations the abolitionists had planned for the helpless citizens of Texas. When the presidential election campaign began in late summer, Southern-rights extremists seamlessly laid the blame for the so-called plot on the nominee and political party favored by the Northern Free-States; Republican Abraham Lincoln. Texas seceded in the wake of his election, the way to the Confederacy smoothed by rumor, panic and editorial pages.

It turns out that the fires were most likely caused by the spontaneous ignition of boxes of new patent phosphorous matches, which had just then gone on the market, and the usually hot summer. But speculation and conspiracy theories are always more attractive than prosaic explanations for unsettling and mysterious events… and were so then as now.

More here on the Texas Troubles

Space Solar Power at 3 Quarks Daily

22. May 2007 · Comments Off on Space Solar Power at 3 Quarks Daily · Categories: General

A link to Taylor Dinerman’s article ‘Space solar power: why do we need it and what do we need to get it?‘ at ‘The Space Review‘ was linked to at 3 Quarks Daily.

Which is all kinds of cool and put a little sunshine in my day. 3 Quarks is a blog where S. Abbas Raza writes

my guest authors and editors and I hope to present interesting items from around the web on a daily basis, in the areas of science, design, literature, current affairs, art, and anything else we deem inherently fascinating.

I’d gotten the impression over the past month that while the site is interesting, mundane stuff like ‘the future’ was not within their scope. Glad to see that the topic on on Mr. Raza’s radar.

And space solar power itself? That we need it is one of those ‘well duh’ things …

Professor Nocera makes it clear that neither conservation nor wind, nuclear, hydro, or biomass energy sources are going to be able, even when taken together, to fill the demand for energy that any reasonable standard of living will require. China and India alone will need more energy than is produced today by the entire planet. Coal, oil, and gas could provide some of the answer but environmental and security reasons tend to rule out those alternatives. Even if one is skeptical of the whole anthropomorphic global warming theory, there are good reasons to want to minimize the use of oil and natural gas and to tread carefully when it comes to using coal as a primary energy source.

So his solution is to go for solar energy in a big way.

One problem. Solar power is not always convenient to obtain. For another we could really use the ground that would be occupied by solar arrays for other stuff. Houses, yes, but also reclaimed wilderness. Would you rather see a hundred thousand acres of restored prairie or the same space covered by solar collection arrays? Thought so. But only 62 miles away is nearly limitless room and sunshine undiluted by an inconvenient atmosphere.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Apocalypto: DVD Review

21. May 2007 · Comments Off on Apocalypto: DVD Review · Categories: Fun and Games, General, That's Entertainment!, World

It’s a curious movie, very different from the usual run of action flics. It reminded me in some ways of “Dances With Wolves”, in the degree of attention to detail paid to the lives of the Mayans. (Did anyone else but me notice, that in “Dances With Wolves”, every conversation among the Indians was carried out while they were going something? Work, mostly. No one was just sitting around, yacking to further the plot points. They were doing something, and talking as an aside…) The DVD of Apocalypto is available very shortly, and I posted a review on Blogger News Network, here.

Obviously…

21. May 2007 · Comments Off on Obviously… · Categories: European Disunion, General, History, World

…Europe was a quagmire, and we just should have pulled out our troops and brought them home!

(Courtesy of Instapundit.)

Requim

20. May 2007 · Comments Off on Requim · Categories: General

Mark Steyn on Flight 93’s memorial. The plan now includes – for the sweet love of thorny-headed Jebus – a wetlands. Full of life. Meant to provide reflection and social interaction. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, ducks are now a fitting memorial for our dead.

Go to any Civil War memorial on any New England common, and marvel at how they managed to honor their dead without wetlands and wind chimes.

A hundred years ago they didn’t have people whose sole job was to tell you that your ideas were tasteless or tacky or jingoistic. You wanted a memorial you hired a guy to sculpt a soldier, make sure the names on the bronze were correct and there, done; a memorial for the ages that can move a strong man to quiet tears a hundred years later.

What emotion would wetlands inspire? Nothing that would be fitting for Flight 93. I wonder if that’s what is truly desired.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
Via.

Routine

20. May 2007 · Comments Off on Routine · Categories: General

A routine moment for the Navy, and for us.

ABOARD USS JOHN C. STENNIS – Cmdr. Muhammad Muzzafar F. Khan relieved Cmdr. Timothy Langdon as commanding officer of Sea Control Squadron (VS) 31 during a ceremony held at sea aboard USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) May 13.

Khan is the first Muslim to take command of an operational aviation squadron in the U.S. Navy.

Not because this is a touchy-feely PC moment – whoop-te-do look at us for promoting an oppressed minority! – but because this kind of stuff happens all the time in the military. It’s only remarkable because he’s the first. And it’s only remarked on because that’s what PR people do.

Here is a guy who had it good in Pakistan; daddy was an airplane pilot and they just don’t give those jobs to anyone. Gave it up when he was 18 to come here and study, then join the Navy. This is what we’re good at doing – co-opting the best and brightest and letting them get as far as they want to.

And the West generally and the United States in particular do this all the time.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Our Betters

20. May 2007 · Comments Off on Our Betters · Categories: General

Four representatives prove they don’t know how to live like everybody else.

Ryan and three other members of Congress have pledged to live for one week on $21 worth of food, the amount the average food stamp recipient receives in federal assistance. That’s $3 a day or $1 a meal. They started yesterday.

According to the rules of the challenge, the four House members cannot eat anything beside their $21 worth of groceries. That means no food at the many receptions, dinners and fundraisers that fill a lawmaker’s week.

The stunt is to demonstrate that $21 dollars in food stamps doesn’t go as far as it needs to. But the terms of the stunt are self-limiting; Declining a free buffet because it’s not in ‘your’ budget? Can you say “setup an experiment in order to fail”?

“No organic foods, no fresh vegetables, we were looking for the cheapest of everything,” McGovern said. “We got spaghetti and hamburger meat that was high in fat — the fattiest meat on the shelf. I have high cholesterol and always try to get the leanest, but it’s expensive. It’s almost impossible to make healthy choices on a food stamp diet.”

Cry me a river. Food stamps are to supplement the diet, not be the entire enchilada. And for all of that I’ve lived healthy on a budget of $20 a week for food. I didn’t like it but it’s possible. Of course I cheated by eating ‘free’ bagels at work when available but I was aiming for ‘practical’ not ‘prove a point’.

Ryan blogs about here.
The McGoverns blog about the experience here.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

This is the future

19. May 2007 · Comments Off on This is the future · Categories: General

A fine rant, reproduced in full.

30 lightyear away, eh? Let me think. With a working Orion-style drive, assuming a payload, for purposes of rough calculation the mass of, let us say, Skylab or 20000 kg; figure that every ton of fully loaded and fueled spacecraft has a volume of 5 to 10 cubic meters, and ten percent of the fully loaded mass spacecraft mass is structural mass. Now, postulating an exhaust velocity of 30000000 m/s, and assuming this is all fuel, and plugging in the values for the rocket equation …. how many years, assuming equal periods of acceleration and deceleration at both ends, minus the relative motion of the star GJ4356 versus Sol … in terms of time, it should take us … let me get about my slipstick … Aha! here we go. My rough back-of-the-envelope calculations show that, under the assumption that we are working within the confines of modern technology, and assuming no fundamental breakthroughs in engineering, and assuming we advance this project at the same rate as other space exploration projects, it should get to his new planet in roughly about … NEVER because OUR SPACE PROGRAM IS TOTALLY DIS-FUNCTIONAL and WORTHLESS pack of time serving BUREAUCRATS who haven’t done anything but throw robots at the outer planets ever since Apollo 17! Do you know when the last moonshot was?? 1972! That was four years before the first airing of Charles’ Angels, it was so long ago. Aren’t those girls grandmas now? THIRTY FIVE FRELLING YEARS SINCE WE PUT A MAN ON THE MOON !!! That’s almost four decades!!!! Do you know what our forefathers could accomplish in four decades? John Ericsson designed the steam-powered ironclad Monitor in 1862; forty-one years later the Wright Brothers flew the first successful heavier-than-air flying machine; four decades later, in 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the first faster-than-sound jet aircraft. Ack! Gack!! Choking on geek-rage! Where’s my flying car? It’s 2007, for Kal-El’s sake! This is the Future!

I couldn’t say it better myself.

Via.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

The Writer’s Life Waltz: Accelerando

19. May 2007 · Comments Off on The Writer’s Life Waltz: Accelerando · Categories: Critters, Domestic, General, Home Front, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

Blogging at a minimum this week due to a confluence of other literary demands, and just no enthusiasm for writing about something suitable for here. The WOT is the same old mouthful of well-chewed gristle, ditto for the prelim-presidential-campaign… jeeze, if I feel that way about it now, I’m going to be hiding in a bunker by next year. People, can we give it a rest? Ditto for American Idol (who?) And as regards Paris Hilton; this may be the only time I shall ever mention her.

Over the last month, we have had a very demented bird, a female cardinal who has taken to perching on a branch of the almond verbena, just outside the window to the living room, and flying repeatedly into the glass window. She will do this for fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch; regularly thumping against the window, as if she is either fighting another female cardinal reflected there, or trying to land on a non-existent branch. We have named her after the stupidest celebrity we know: Paris Hilton.

The pictures of Hot Wells came out very much as I hoped, so finish polishing the article to a high glossy shine, and edit the pictures suitably. I have a thick book to read and a review to write for BNN, ditto a DVD to watch and review… and there is another book on the way. Just when I worked out how to lead into events around the election of 1860 and the secession crisis in Texas, as they affected the characters in part two of Adelsverein; or as a reader described it “Barsetshire with Cyprus Trees”. So I am getting ready to plunge into the operatic drama of the Civil War; murder, lynch mobs, treachery brother-against-brother and all that.

I did get a response from the agent who wanted a look at the first 100 pages; a regretful pass. The first four chapters just did not send her into the transports of enthusiasm necessary to take on representing it, and a paragraph of the usual blah blah blah saying that it was a terribly subjective business, wishing me luck in getting representation elsewhere blah blah blah.

I have sent out fifty query letters for “Adelsverein” including a SASE for response over the last two months, but only gotten back twenty or so letters which usually begin “Dear Author/Writer” and apologizing for the form response. Which leave me wondering where the other queries are, and if they are peeling off my stamps and using them for something else!

Back to work, on Chapter Three, Volume 2. (First chapter posted here)

Field Improvised Upgrades

17. May 2007 · Comments Off on Field Improvised Upgrades · Categories: General

Murdoc had a bit about an upgrade package to the Army’s M1A2 tanks.

“The guys can’t wait,” said Capt. David Centeno, assistant product manager of the TUSK program. “They need this stuff. Every time I go [to Iraq] they ask, ‘When will we get it?’”

Well gee, I thought, the guys at the sharp end have to wait for the Army to get around to adding equipment like a second mount for an M2? Or a T.V. camera on the back for the driver? Were I the C.O. (and this might be a good reason why I’m not) I’d have my mechanics whip out a welding rig and go to town.

Seems like the Marines have more initiative than the Army.

The Seabees of 30th Naval Construction Regiment (NCR) provided the 2nd Marine Tank Battalion with an armor upgrade May 1 to help keep the gunners safe during their operations in the Al Anbar Province of Iraq.

On a tank crew, the loader feeds ammunition into the machine gun and is often exposed to small arms fire from opposing forces. To stay safe, the loader has to close to the tankís access hatch. But if he does that, he can no longer do his job.

“ì[The new armor] lets us leave the hatch open,” said Marine Staff Sgt. Ceasare Williams, of the 2nd Marine Tank Battalion. “This allows the loader to stay in the fight.”

“It will also help [protect us against] IED (Improvised Explosive Device) shrapnel,” added Marine Sgt. Brad Nevitt, also of the 2nd Marine Tank Battalion, as he referred to IED often placed in the road by insurgent forces.

Semper Fi. And the Seabees rock.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Once Upon Another War

17. May 2007 · Comments Off on Once Upon Another War · Categories: Air Force, General, History, Military, War, Wild Blue Yonder, World

A meditation upon one of WWII’s most unusual missions… which in even at the time seemed almost as if it were a movie…

From Richard Fermandez, “Wretchard” at The Belmont Club, courtesy of PJ Media.

A War “Czar”

16. May 2007 · Comments Off on A War “Czar” · Categories: General

Greeeeaaaattttt. A War Czar. Gosh boss, I feel better already.

Bush selects general for ‘war czar’ Critics are quick to point out that Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute had argued against a larger U.S. force in Iraq. By Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel, Times Staff Writers May 16, 2007
WASHINGTON — After a lengthy and difficult search, President Bush has tapped a three-star Army general as his new “war czar,” with White House authority to pull together increasingly frayed federal efforts to deal with the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the operations director for the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, will fill the job, which is part of the White House’s National Security Council, administration officials said. He is to be an assistant to the president, empowered by Bush to secure cooperation, support and personnel for the wars from across the federal government.

 

Because you know, the “Oil Czar” and the “Drug Czar” did so very much to solve THOSE problems.

Three weeks to retire from the Air Force and every day that passes I’m more positive I made the right decision.

Cross-Posted at Faster Than The Blog.

Southside Shades

15. May 2007 · Comments Off on Southside Shades · Categories: Domestic, General, Local, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Blondie and I spent a good chunk of Monday wandering among ruins. By prior arrangement of course; do I look like a trespasser? Frankly I am an exceeding law-abiding person because I don’t have the steely nerve and towering sense of entitlement required to be otherwise. We were there with permission and had the assistance of the caretaker, who took us around to all the most attractive and poignant spots on the grounds of the old Hot Wells Resort, pointing out all the relics of the original landscape plants, keeping us off any bits that were structurally unsound (although it was fairly obvious which those were) and generally sharing her own fondness for the place. And it wasn’t a bad place to spend a spring midday, with all the wildflowers growing tall around the crumbling brick walls and butterflies staggering erratically from plant to plant, the birds singing happily… and the caretakers’ dogs in vocal outburst with some of the feral dogs which live in the ruins of the old tourist cottages, back in the thickets where the old hotel building was, before it burned to the ground in the 1920ies.

This junket came about because a friend put me in touch with the editor of a local monthly magazine (which actually pays rather handsomely) who liked my writing samples. The editor asked me to pitch her some story ideas, and the one she liked was about Hot Wells… especially if I could do pictures to go with it.

Many years ago, a contractor digging a well near the San Antonio State Hospital had the water come up hot and steaming, and smelling of sulfur. Entrepreneurial local gentlemen put their minds and money into taking advantage of this happy chance. There was constructed a lavish brick bathhouse with three pools, elaborate dressing rooms and an imposing entrance. Off to one side there was an equally ornate and luxurious hotel, set in lushly landscaped grounds, the whole fitted with every modern convenience and offering every amusement that the late 19th century offered. There was a private railway spur, to facilitate the millionaires who came to take the waters and traveled in their own parlor car, a grand avenue ornamented with a fountain and palm trees, a grove of pecan trees by the river, which ran along the back of the grounds… all in all, it was the premier spa in this part of the country for many years, and fondly remembered by many. Because, alas, Hot Wells seemed to be cursed. The various buildings burned no less than four times. The grand hotel burned completely to the ground and was replaced in the late twenties by tourist bungalows. The bathhouse came to house a restaurant called the “Flame Room”, as the once-grand resort degenerated into a scruffy motor-court motel on the South Side, dreaming away among the trees and memories of better days.

The current owner/developer hopes to develop it into a sort of Community Park, with the bathhouse ruins a central jewel. It is a strangely serene place, lightly haunted… but in a happy way, which is my theme for the article. I took lots of pictures, trying for that “ruins of the Roman Forum with plants growing all over everything” look. I have only one days’ work this week for the worlds’ tallest ADHD child, so plan to finish the Hot Wells piece well ahead of deadline, pound out another chapter of “Adelsverein” now that the first chapter of Volume II is posted here… and generally hope to hear from an agent that they love the whole thing, and may they read the rest of it, pleasepleaseplease?

More here, about Hot Wells.

Deal with it later

13. May 2007 · Comments Off on Deal with it later · Categories: General

Fascinating animated short from Colby Buzzell’s story “Men in Black”. It is graphic – not so much what is shown but implied.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Happy Mother’s Day

13. May 2007 · Comments Off on Happy Mother’s Day · Categories: General

Fall and Rise, Part 2

11. May 2007 · Comments Off on Fall and Rise, Part 2 · Categories: European Disunion, General, History, Memoir, Military, War

The summer that I was sixteen and a half was the one spent in Britain and Europe, doing the Eurailpass/Youth Hostel/$5.00 a day adventure… which upon reflection at a point nearly four decades later seems nearly as long ago as luxury steamship travel and the Grand Tour. I learned many useful and useless things during that summer, and acquired a certain sort of fearlessness about travel and new places, and strange people, as well as the ability to manage a 70-pound backpack in all situations, including the narrow confines of the little stairway to the top level of an English double-decker bus. It’s an awkward thing to manage, of course, and sometimes total strangers were moved to be of assistance, especially when we were shedding our packs (which were our entire luggage) or taking them up again.

It’s of enormous help, you see, for someone to grab the pack and hold it steady as you slip the straps off your shoulders. Then you turn around and thank them, and taking the pack by the frame, you stow it away in the overhead, or set it down…or whatever. We came to know that there were two kinds of men who would instantly offer this assistance: the young ones were Boy Scouts… and all the older ones had been soldiers.

My travel buddy, Esther Tutwyler and I struck up a conversation with one of those helpful older sorts in an English railway compartment… who of course turned out to have been a soldier, and also confessed that he was always grateful to Americans because Patton’s army had liberated him from a German POW camp. This was an instant bond, as Esther’s father was a career Army warrant officer who had fought his way all across France and Germany and done his share of liberating various bits of personnel and real estate. But when I asked the Englishman where he had been captured, he answered with the name of his unit, and that he had been captured at Dunkirk as part of the British Expeditionary Force. I actually recognized the name of his unit, (I knew all sorts of useless trivia at this time) and remarked that they had been part of the defending force around the pocket where the British forces had been driven, upon the opening of the German drive into France,
“Oh, yes,” he said, with great good humor, “But if I had known then it was the perimeter around the bloody place, I would have made Jesse Owens look like a turtle!”

The German offensive of May, 1940 punched through the weak point— Belgium, Holland, and Luxemburg— and split the Allies in two. The bulk of the British Expeditionary Force fell back towards the flat sandy coast between Calais and the Belgian frontier… towards Gravelines and La Panne, Nieuport and Bergues… and Dunkirk, with its inner harbor and much of the town smashed to rubble and rendered useless by German air raid. Black smoke from burning oil stocks shrouded the town, and set up a column of black smoke that could be seen for miles. But the outer harbor was sheltered by a long jetty, or mole; wooden gangways spanning concrete plinths reaching out from the shore and sheltering the outer harbor. The moles were not intended as a means of landing or loading personnel, but in a pinch, ocean-going ships could tie up and take on troops… but it was a tricky maneuver at best, and made even more of a hazard by constant German air raids. German artillery dominated most of the sea routes approaching the town… but still, according to most accounts, more than three-quarters of those rescued from Dunkirk were taken off from the moles, by ships who packed in human cargo wherever there was room. It took about seven hours to load 1,000 men on a destroyer, for example… and every minute of those hours, that ship and the men lined up on the mole, patiently waiting their turn to board would be a target of everything the Germans could throw at them. On the evening of 27 May, 1940 the Navy officer on station in Dunkirk sent a message to his superior, saying essentially that evacuating from the moles was too slow, too hazardous. He asked for ships to be sent towards the beaches, east of Dunkirk… and for all available small craft to serve as ferries between the beach and the larger craft.

There were already hundreds of regular Naval and merchant-marine vessels at hand to serve in the evacuation, plus a number of requisitioned Dutch coastal transports, known as “scoots”… but during the night of the 27th, Navy officers scoured boatyards, yacht-ports and wharves all through the south-eastern coast and rivers of England for small craft that could be of use. Fishing trawlers and tramps, tug boats, motor yachts and countless numbers of row-boats, fire-boats and cross-channel paddle-steamers were pressed into immediate service, with crews formed by a mix of reservists, regulars, volunteers, civilians and owners… hastily equipped and fueled up, sketchily armed, formed into convoys or taken under tow, they all went straight into the thick of it… to get their soldiers out.

The legend of the little boats was born out of Dunkirk, of civilian boat-owners sailing into hell … even though it wasn’t quite like that, there’s enough truth in it to stir the blood of anyone inclined to step forward in a time of crisis. Though most of the BEF that escaped did so through the harbor, the image of shallow-draft little boats sailing close into the shore, and of columns of soldiers standing chest-deep in the water, waiting for their countrymen to come for them and bring them safe home … oh, yes; there is the image imperishable, of nine days of glory in the midst of defeat. The British Army left their armor, their heavy artillery, their transport behind; with luck all of it spiked, scattered and burned all along the sandy dunes along the shore from Dunkirk to La Panne. They came away with what they carried, their weariness and pride, for they were still alive.

Arms and transport, armor and artillery, they could be replaced… at a cost, and in some little time; but in only a fraction of the time it takes to train an officer or an NCO, or to raise up an Army. And that was the victory of Dunkirk, delivered out of defeat and captivity at the hands of Hitler’s marvelous war machine; an Army that would return. And that was the victory of the little boats, the volunteers, and the organization of everything that could float, and head towards the column of smoke in the sky…and carry away a soldier or two. It must have been all the sweeter, a victory and an army, snatched from the wreck following on the defeat of an ally which had been until then thought stout and strong.

I couldn’t resist this coda, found from one of my reference books: A very junior Navy officer on the destroyer HMS Grenade was later asked by his commanding officer to write an account of his experience, after the ship was fatally disabled by a bomb which went straight down the funnel and exploded in the boiler. He wrote

“Dear Sir: there was a bloody great bang. I have the honor to be, Sir, Your Obedient servant.”

Hammer Time!

11. May 2007 · Comments Off on Hammer Time! · Categories: General

MC Hammer – he has a blog of course – has been hired on to a panel of expert by Technorati. Is he an expert on startups and marketing and Web 2.0ish things?

Well, he did squander 33 million dollars. One could say that is enough to qualify him.

Word.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Fall and Rise, Part 1

11. May 2007 · Comments Off on Fall and Rise, Part 1 · Categories: European Disunion, General, History, War, World

Found at “Chicago Boyz“: a long evocative essay about the fall of France, which took place early in May, 1940. The writer takes a look at some of the factors which led to the gutting of France… factors which may look hauntingly familiar.

My own essay on a significant historical event which followed closely after, will follow.

The Writers Life Waltz: Divertimento

10. May 2007 · Comments Off on The Writers Life Waltz: Divertimento · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Somewhat diverted this week by simultaneously beginning the first chapter of the second book about the Texas Germans (see the website, in a couple of days I’ll post the sample chapter there) and by actually having nearly a full week of work with my some-time employer… or as I call him, the worlds’ tallest ADHD child. I’ve now been working for him long enough that I have said this to his face, and he knows himself well enough that he can laugh… mostly because it’s true. I’ve been working a half day, two or three days a week, just doing basic office admin, filing, data entry, doing letters and brochures and reminding him about things like… oh, I dunno, answering telephone queries about properties for sale, and paying the bills regularly. And finding things. Very important, that…being able to find things. My personal tendency is to put things away, and remember where I put them. Therefore, it will tend to appear like the deepest sort of black magic when I can produce them almost before he can finish asking “Where is….??!!!”

His preferred method, BTW, is to just let it accumulate on his desk— notes, bills, reminders, reports, correspondence and all, and when the piles get too deep, scoop it all into a file box, stick it in the corner… and then wonder why he can’t find anything.

Hey, that’s why I get paid the big bucks. But wait, there’s more.

Dave the Computer Genius had installed a very workable little scheduling and data program on the office computers, and showed me how it functioned: it’s called “Time & Chaos” by the way… the nonconformists answer to “Outlook” I think. Up until this week it was just another funny icon on the bosses’ desktop, but last week I commandeered his Palm-Pilot and transferred the client and contact information and sorted them neatly into various categories. Nearly 500 of them… but hey, who’s counting. Data entry… it’s the office workers version of ditch-digging.

Beginning this week, I stood over the boss with a whip… no, not really, but the thought was really tempting… and I showed him how to open the program, and the field where he could enter reminders and notes for himself, link them to his client/contact data base, prioritize them, and check them off as they were done. And to enter appointments… and even to enter new contacts, instead of scribbling them on post-its and bits of scrap paper, or on the backs of envelopes or pieces of junk mail… all of which were prone to being thrown away, lost or misplaced, accidentally stuck to a completely unrelated file, gathered up and dumped into a box, played with by one of the cats, or eaten by the dog… (Yeah, it’s that kind of office. 4 office cats, one office dog.)

So, the boss is as nearly organized as it will ever be possible for him to be, and meanwhile I have been working away in my own little office, cunningly disguised as the south-west corner of my bedroom, sending out query letters about “Adelsverein” to an assortment of agents. There is a website that lists the fairly legitimate, reputable agencies, and I have been methodically working my way through it. I sent out to all the ones who accept email submissions months ago; now I send out about five to seven query letters every week, sometimes with a synopsis or sample chapter attached if requested, and the always-required self-addressed-stamped-envelope. This has taken on the feeling of a necessary chore, like putting out the trash cans. As this blogger sympathetically noted, “Writing it is easy. Selling is the hard part”. Honestly, I put the submissions and the queries out of mind as soon as I send them; somehow it just feels mentally healthier that way.

I do own to being mildly curious about one thing; I send out five or six letters and submissions a week, each with a self-addressed-stamped-envelope. I’ve been doing this since about October of last year, so I would normally expect back about the same quantity to come trickling back… but I never seem to get more than three or four in a week. (Although I did get four of them in one day… bummer!)

So, what is happening to all the others? In this best of all possible worlds, the submission is sitting on someone’s’ desk, or being reviewed by a committee and I might hear back months later. Or, they are peeling off the stamps and using them for their office correspondence?

I have had an email request from one agency for 100 pages, as they were somewhat intrigued by the premise… and just yesterday I opened the usual little return envelope and barely glanced at the letter before throwing it into the reject file… but no! They want to look at the first fifty pages, a detailed chapter outline, a copy of my original submission letter, a cover letter with a current telephone and email, another self-addressed-stamped-envelope… and way down at the bottom in teensy print I think they are requesting a small sample of belly-button lint, also. I’ll send it off, of course (all but the lint, I was joking, people!) and forget about it the minute I drop it in the mail.

So, that’s were it stands this week. Same Stuff, Different Day.

Carnival of Space – Week 2

10. May 2007 · Comments Off on Carnival of Space – Week 2 · Categories: General

Carnival of Space – Week 2 is up.  And look – The Daily Brief was mentioned.

At The Daily Brief Brian Dunbar responds to an Apollo Lunar Surface Journal article. Brian points out that we are in danger of losing knowledge regarding the moon from the guys who DID go to the moon. It is amazing to think these men will be pushing 100 years old when we finally get around to going back.

Huzzah*

Respectfully Submitted,
Brian Dunbar

*that one’s for you, Timmer.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

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