Tag Archives: science

Britons want to know what possessed officials targeting apostrophes

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But, he added, correct use of the apostrophe isn’t simply nitpicking; the tiny punctuation mark can make an outsized difference, as in this sentence: “If you’re late for dinner, you can eat your son’s.”

“If you don’t put the apostrophe in ‘son’s,’ it’s cannibalism, isn’t it?” said Noon, the father of two English teachers. “It’s only when English is clear and precise that you can get the message across properly.”

Yes, what did possessed them, the Apostles?  but then is it also not Paul’s or the King’s, unless it says so?

The British are so polite, it doesn’t even sound like war.

Of course I guess they don’t have Fox News then either, to stand up for God and King. If no one tells you it’s war, is it war?

I wonder if this Pope is going to weigh-in on the issue? The last Pope was more interested in what was considered mundane issues in the Church. If I understand it correctly, the new Pope is a little more Conservative.

via Britons want to know what possessed officials targeting apostrophes – latimes.com.

Stealth Jets Return To The Air Following Engine Snafu

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“What is different is that this airplane has accelerational characteristics with a combat load that no other airplane has, because we carry a combat load internally,” Lockheed exec Tom Burbage told aviation reporter Dave Majumdar last year.

OK enough! They are building an aircraft that has the characteristics,  if not the look, of a flying saucer. It’s all in the z-axis baby!

OK!! There I’ve said it. Now can’t we, or at least shouldn’t, we just stop talking about all of this. :)

via Stealth Jets Return To The Air Following Engine Snafu — For Now | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Unimaginable Statements and Signs of Surrender

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Brett Friedman said it best. “Can you imagine a USMC 4-Star ever saying “we’ll be unprepared’? Never”

Oh how we long for the days of the NeoCons, when what our generals said didn’t matter.

Perhaps Friedman should ask the General what we will be prepared for, because the General has obviously given that some great thought. That is what generals do; they think.

But more than just thinking, a general adds strategy to the thinking process and his/her strategy has two ends to think about and prepare for: the beginning of the end (which the General says we are not prepared) and the end of the end, which I am betting he is prepared for.

So either seek the advice of the general that tells you that “we’ll be unprepared”, or become a Republican :)

But on the other hand, if we somehow bite-the-bullet and Decide to Act according to how we are Oriented (we are a consumer economy) and pay for the debt that we have accrued in the world, perhaps we should take advantage of the environment that we have positioned ourselves in, and opt out.

We have positioned ourselves as a nation of great command, but little control. This is what the General is trying to tell you.

We are unable to fight a war against  a nation that is in control of what we want (cool electronic gadgets and games), while at the same time maintaining the demand for those products.

So we are unprepared for war.

At the same time, the advantage we have in the world is our ability  to move our culture in new directions, think  what Jazz, Blues, Rock and Roll, Rap, ect. has to offer.

This ability to create fast transits (OODA) is pissing many people off, and what the General is also  telling you is: we can’t afford to pay for this war against the generation of diversity while at the same time fighting a war against the generation of conformity.

This ability, to generate diversity in our cultures, upsets many people of many orientations.

The greatest Orientation that has been upset has been among our own culture–the Conservatives.

The Conservatives want to enforce conformity, to our past, because it is that Orientation that has been the most successful, in the past.

Unfortunately, the past is no more. We are a nation of command and what control the suppliers of our resources had over us is gone, in a mushroom cloud.

This ability of our culture to diversify does not set well for the party of our culture that demands control, i.e., Conservatives.

The Conservatives want to enforce the conformity of our past on the culture of those generations that are living in the future. These generations are called Liberals.

Liberals want to generate diversity that increase demands, unlike the culture of the Conservatives who want to decrease diversity, to conform to demand.

The problem being: the potential for both diversity and conformity is equal, and so the two structures, the left and Right are at war.

To generate diversity while at the same time enforce conformity will take some kind of strategy over the process, but I believe these two worlds can live together, it is doable.

It’s a game, and you all are invited.

via Information Dissemination: Unimaginable Statements and Signs of Surrender.

Soft Power, A Strategic Theory Perspective

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If we label the ideal commercial person as a “business manager” and the ideal military person as a “soldier”, we would label the ideal soft power institution employee as a “hippie” without the negative stereotypical characteristics.

Right on!

But more importantly, I think he brings up the point that, in today’s world, both hard power and soft power are basically the same culturally, with the structure being different.

Hard power is structure more like a 2×4, while soft power is more like a feather pillow. Most countries would rather get hit with a pillow than a 2×4, but no mater how you look at it, you’re still getting hit.

Seyditz89 says we need to change the culture of soft power, and I would not argue against this. I especially like the part where seyditz89 turns it over to the hippies.

However, power is power and when you start messing with it between countries there is a price to be paid, and the outcome of both forms of power just depends on who has the most energy to pay with.

So perhaps we should develop a different form of power.

Network wise, soft power runs in phases much like 3-phase power running an industrial motor.

The flow of currant that runs the motor not only alternates in direction but is carried on different degrees in waves at the changing of direction.

These “waves” of soft power come into the target country in the form of resources, with the hope of changing the way the motor moves.

Culturally wise, the more powerful country doesn’t want the motor to stop turning, it just doesn’t want to give it any more power, and it wants the less powerful country to act more like the more powerful country.

Changing how another nation of power acts is a big problem, especially when the more powerful nation has less energy. That is basically where the U.S.A. is at. The U.S.A. is a nation of little energy, but is able to, because of its culture, express that energy very quickly.

So the third form of power, which I shall call here and now hippie power, would run parallel to the nation less powerful and only connect perpendicular to the less powerful nation, much like our connection with Yemen today.

I am not sure this less love and more sex approach would be hippie approved,  but yeah, sex, drugs and rock and roll.

1 out of 3 is probably better than what our soft power is doing today.

H/T Zenpundit

via MilPub: Soft Power, A Strategic Theory Perspective.

Chinese state media says China makes American Christmas possible « China Daily Mail

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The article argues that the West could not celebrate Christmas without China’s exports and that we should spend the holiday expressing gratitude for Chinese manufacturing.

Well at least not if you use a Apple, but then India pretty much owns Microsoft  so it just depends on which side your junk falls on, the left or right.

So is Microsoft dead?

I don’t know. Some of my friends on Facebook would strongly disagree.

via Chinese state media says China makes American Christmas possible « China Daily Mail.

The Flag

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A General on a mission is called a flag-general. In today’s world, of video games and simulations, it is important for a flag-general, especially with a Red team under his/her flag, to understand not just when he loses, but that when he wins is also an important event to note.

Because it is harder to prove a negative than a positive, the flag-general may not remember whose side he is on, and, because all flag-generals are winners, it is doubly hard to prove, by their Red team, that they are losers.

As an example, if you are a flag-general and just bought a house and,  if you are on your hands and knees, crawling around under that house looking for only God  knows what, then, perhaps, you haven’t really won.

If this is true that you didn’t actually win, it is because you didn’t know your enemy. The reason you didn’t know your enemy is because the Red team hid the enemy from you. That is what Red teams do, they hide things from you.

But what we do know is that a flag-general would do only what his God knows, to complete his mission. This is because his God is under his flag, and, of course, because the reverse of that is true, they are both positives.

Boyd and the U.S. Navy’s Return to History

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For him the likely victor was the competitor who best adapted to change while keeping his opponent off-balance. That meant swiftly observing how conditions have changed, orienting to change, deciding how to adapt, and acting on that decision.

via Boyd and the U.S. Navy’s Return to History | The Naval Diplomat.

One problem I have with this quote’s description of the victor’s OODA loop is that you don’t orient to change; “...observing how conditions have changed, orienting to change, deciding how to adapt, and acting on that decision.”

The victor orients towards an advantage in the environment observed.

When the environment changes and you lose or gain an advantage, your orientation destructs and then constructs a new structure that takes advantage of that new environment. Boyd was a genius, because he could destruct and construct a new orientation faster than anyone; they need to re define genius.

The victor’s decision then is not on how to adapt, because both Orientations has changed and to the victor will go the spoils of that adaptation. But the victor does need to decide on Acting according to the victor’s new advantage, or disadvantage. The victor does not always have the advantage in the environment, as Boyd later learned, but, to win, the victor needs to make it his advantage.

The Orientation of both the victor and loser has to change, because of the feed-ahead they are getting from the past environment, of relationships and connections, mixed with the feed-back they are getting from the future environment, of  judgments and potentials, creates a new leaver that either the loser or victor can take advantage of. That leaver is reliant on the momentum at the full-come-point at the moment of inertia.

I mean, one may have more  advantage, in any particular environment than another, but each “others” has momentum that can be used to change the direction of both. Grabbing the momentum first can even change the direction of the one with the most advantage. And, as the one who can take advantage of the momentum first is able to possibly change the directions of both, the one who is able to make Decisions, to Act on the momentum, faster, has a chance of winning.

As most of the time in a OODA loop is spent between Orientation and Decision (building an Orientation and Deciding how to use it) the person who is able to make those decisions (or any decision) quicker has a great advantage, as The Act has already been judged by the orientation an advantage before the Decision to use it is given (OOAD).

Most of the time it is a great enough advantage that it can even make the loser the victor, and to the victor an IQ of 90.

Obama’s Strategic Shift: Is Storytelling the Secret Weapon of the 2012 Race?

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Obama’s Strategic shift did not just occur in the South China Sea, it also has apparently begun in his attack to keep his job.

.” But it got really interesting when the conversation turned to what the president considers the biggest mistake of his first term. It was, he said, “thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right.”

If you replace the word “policy” with process, then what this statement is saying is: “I have gone strategic.”

Policy builds and maintains the process inside a OODA loop. Strategy creates a moment of inertia to by-pass the policy.

Strategy is, as diagrammed, by the way of the Double Freytag Triangle, in the book Tempo, by Venkatesh Rao, narrative decision-making.

 ”The nature of this office,” he said, “is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.”

Obama has “found” strategy and he is using it to continue the narrative (“story”-telling) that is the USA.

I wish him luck on this, because all strategy is flawed, and the worst environment to try and maintain strategy is one in which everyone puts the “bad breath” on you and your narrative. Ill-will puts the focus on your flaws, which is a distraction that keeps your “story” from becoming transparent.

The good news is: it does’t take much to hide/expose the narrative, because of the nature of complexity.

The environment that strategy runs in is so complex, in its policy, that the “tipping point” between a successful and failed strategy is very close in either direction. Policy is created to make sure the process is both accurate and precise, it is both of these (accuracy and precision) that “target” the “tipping point”, in any process.

In other words, strategy has just as much chance of success as failure despite the complexity, but it demands that you get the “story” out, which is an uncertain process.

The only thing that is certain, when using strategy instead of process, all strategy is flawed, in at least one point in the narrative. As Venkatesh Rao shows in the Double Freytag Triangle, all strategy starts out as a “Cheap Trick”, but, before the story ends, it changes into a more powerful form of the “Cheap Trick”. If it doesn’t change, then the “flaw” absorbs the strategy into the “story”, and the narrative continues, or not.

I think it is getting close to the time when we will be able to tell if Obama has found that flaw and is able to take advantage of the situation. Perhaps the “Cheap Trick” can be found inside the Constitution, and the story will move on to another “peak”.

As this article leads me to believe that Obama has bet his presidency on strategy, one has to admit that it took some guts and a whole lot of faith, in the process, which he built his strategy on, to change.

via Arianna Huffington: Is Storytelling the Secret Weapon of the 2012 Race?.

The Romney-Cheney Doctrine

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Out of Romney’s 24 special advisors on foreign policy, 17 served in the Bush-Cheney administration. If Romney were to win, it’s likely that many of these people would serve in his administration in some capacity — a frightening prospect given the legacy of this particular group. The last time they were in government, it was disastrous.

via The Romney-Cheney Doctrine – By Representative Adam Smith | Foreign Policy.

Maybe disastrous, but at least they didn’t put 30 million children on heath insurance.

The generational shift emerging in Chinese society

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You know the old bit (repeated by me) where Chinese activists said, “Before Tiananmen, we thought freedom was 90% political and 10% economic.  After Tiananmen, we decided that freedom was 90% economic and 10% political.”

via Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Globlogization – Blog – The generational shift emerging in Chinese society.

I have said in the past that I thought all war was about economic considerations, fought by people with little economic considerations. The Doctor makes this more clear.

I think the ratios are about right. 90% economic–10% political. It is the political people who are without economic considerations.

Because politicians are supported by economic consideration, they don’t have to think about economic considerations.

The problem with Barnett’s analyses: the 10% really matter, 90% of the time, when it comes down to war. In China the 10% have an army to control the 90%. This control is mostly over feet, not minds.

If you have control over a persons feet–you don’t need control over the mind, so much.

In analyses, the better question might asked: where are those feet going, as we know who controls them?