Tuesday, January 31, 2012

SOF's Secret Weapon: F3EAD


The Army has known for a while now that "regular" units need to learn SOF-like skills in order to be successful at twenty-first century warfare. Advanced targeting will continue to be a major topic for cross-training. Here is a primer from SWJ.

How To: become a columnist

VanityFair.com
From Inc.com: How to Land a Great Columnist Gig

more on Health Care

healthcare-now.org

from the NYT: The End of Health Insurance Companies
By 2020, the American health insurance industry will be extinct. Insurance companies will be replaced by accountable care organizations — groups of doctors, hospitals and other health care providers who come together to provide the full range of medical care for patients.
see also, previous post on healthcare

Best of both worlds: Maple Syrup Whiskey

Cabin Fever Maple Whiskey

How to: tomato sauce


I already advertised the No Reservations Techniques Special, but I thought a post dedicated specifically to sauce was in order. So here is the master class.

Tako Approved: Comedian Wyatt Cenac


Before listening to Jesse Thorn's 2011 Comedy Special I only knew Wyatt Cenac from the Daily Show. But now I think he is a stand-up comic to watch. Here is an interview with Men's Journal.

Humans with wings

britannica.com
Modern human wings

Equal pay for equal work?


This post from Greg Mankiw discusses a January report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that concludes federal employees earn more than private-sector employees of the same credentials.
Is public service deserving of a premium salary?

Education Reform: New School

tltgroup.org

As previously discussed, I believe we are at the dawn of a revolution in education. The example from Stanford is just the tip of the iceberg. The Khan Academy is another example that is more established.

Great Books

TheAtlantic.com
If you love books and you need some help finding something to read, The Atlantic has you covered: The Greatest Books of All Time, as Voted by 125 Famous Authors.

I'm SAD

Wired.com
Correction, I have SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) which is really just an excuse for my general orneriness when it is overcast. This article is for all of you who, like me, are solar powered.
Fortunately, technology can help you beat the winter blues. In this article, we'll help you spot SAD and teach you how to simulate the sunlight that your brain's been missing.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Survey: your salary

follow the link and tell the DOD what you expect from military pay.

How to: take care of your winter clothes

From Put This On blog.

Your Blues name

I found a link to this picture over at MentalFloss.com. My Blues name is Jailhouse Liver Lee--kinda lame.

Manvotational: Be Faithful

Steadfastness is the indispensable quality of every man who one day does not wish to be obliged to say: “I have wasted my life.”

War Story: Iraq, Jan 2007

SOC.mil

When I was in Iraq in 2005, Gina Cavallaro and her photographer spent about a week with my unit. She recently co-wrote a book about some of her stories from her embeds. And now this pretty good war story:
The fighting that erupted Jan. 28, 2007, turned out to be some of the fiercest of the Iraq war. U.S. and Iraqi soldiers killed 373 enemy fighters, and more than 400 surrendered. The U.S. Army awarded more than 100 combat decorations for bravery that day, including at least eight Silver Stars and a Distinguished Flying Cross.
No one knew about it. 

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Harvard: feet aren't designed for shoes


There is new fuel for the debate between minimalists and the old school running establishment. Apparently we really are "born to run."
The findings add to a small but growing body of research that suggests the best way to run is the way our forebears did: sans shoes.

How to study

CollegeStudyTips.net
Keeping with the recent academic theme, I found this short post about studying. I thought it was post-worthy because the recommendation to distribute learning is news to me.
Psychologists have shown that plenty of study techniques work, but I want to share two in particular that have wormed their way into my learning routine.

on Writing: Warlord's Writing Tips

Life Magazine

My English 300 class junior year was the first time I ever found any interest in writing. I can't remember the professor's name but I can see him and I can hear him scolding us for our lack of basic skills.
Since that class I have read a lot about writing--everything from Elements of Style and William Zinsser, to Stephen King and Elmore Leonard, and of course the master.
So I was pleasantly surprised to find this list over at SWJ. It is great to see people in the military concerned about the state of written communication but more importantly, it is an excellent summary of most of the tips I have found along the way.



Wednesday, January 25, 2012

News Flash: Men respond to skirts

NCBI ROFL: The effect of women’s suggestive clothing on men’s behavior and judgment: a field study.

on Writing: a well crafted proposal


Although this article is intended for researchers it is a good reference for writing any argument.

Conventional Wisdom: The Lorax's lesson

Lorax fever is starting to spread. Before signing the petition to include environmentalist education on the movie website, I thought about this article from 2009. Even though the Lorax is one of my all time favorite Dr. S books, I appreciate Glaeser's point--very Gladwellian:
Contrary to the story’s implied message, living in cities is green, while living surrounded by forests is brown. By building taller and taller buildings, the Once-ler was proving himself to be the real environmentalist.

Conventional Wisdom: Skipping meals

There is a story in the first Freakonomics book about Psychologist, Seth Roberts, who experimented on himself and developed the "Shangri-La Diet". He found that by eating a spoonful of sugar at intervals throughout the day he could "fool" his body into believing it had enough calories.

It seems like this article about the potential benefits of Intermittent Fasting (IF) may touch on some of the same physiological responses that Robert's observed. I'll be watching to see how Dr Berardi's findings are received by the fitness community. Here's a taste:
For a very specific demographic – people with fitness and exercise experience who also consider breakfast 15 minutes they’ll never get back – IF could be a very effective approach. Maybe even the best approach.

SOTU address: Public Speaking Class

FastCompany.com
FastCompany has an interesting analysis of the public speaking techniques that the President used last night. Although the article's title is overkill.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Cool house

Inhabitat.com

Video: Cyclist Humor


SH*T CYCLISTS SAY

Are name brand batteries worth it?

 Yes.

Flying worm UAV

DefenseTech.org
WTF?

Education reform: unbundling the university

KaplanInternational.com
A revolution in education is coming. This article from The Atlantic discusses alternate higher education. 
For a long time now, universities have flourished by offering a bundled package of knowledge and credentialing. People attended university in order to learn stuff that they couldn't learn elsewhere -- because the experts weren't elsewhere -- and to be certified by those experts as having actually learned said stuff. The bundle has been a culturally powerful one.

This would suck

Imagine losing control over everything. You can’t move on your own. You can’t scratch an itch. And worse still, you can’t tell anyone around you that you have an itch. You can feel pain, hunger, loneliness, and fear, but you can’t react to those sensations. You are totally aware of your surroundings, but you can’t communicate your feelings or desires, or even your basic needs. The term for this horror islocked-in syndrome.
Read the full text here: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/19084#ixzz1kQEit9FU 

How to: work life balance


from FastCompany

New Laird Hamilton Fitness column


In his first column for MensJournal, Laird says you should hang upside down.

Science: Impossible Chemistry


5 Chemistry rules broken

Gear: folding backpacking stove

the 180 Stove is hot!

Finding a vein in the dark

There are many stories about skilled medics who were able to find a vein and insert a catheter for an IV amid outrageous circumstances--darkness, dirt, grime, wind, rain, bumpy rides, and interference for example. Apparently, thanks to BattleView soon veins will glow in the dark through NVGs. I suspect there will be many more amazing stories.

Fog of War


A great article from SWJ:
How do we train and educate leaders to overcome the paralysis caused by the combination of an expectation of information dominance and the choking influence of risk-averse climates? 

Monday, January 23, 2012

Top Shelf South Carolina Whiskey?

South Carolina inventor ages liquor overnight

Winning arguments as the CJCS


From TBD:
"when I go into a meeting to discuss policy, discuss strategy, discuss operations, plans, whatever it happens to be, he who has the best context generally prevails in the argument, not necessarily who's got the best facts. There's a difference. It's who has the best context in which those facts exist."

Support for the 6 Killer Aps


Steven Levitt over at Freakonomics posted an interesting vignette from the ongoing internet freedom (SOPA) debate but that's not why I'm writing about it. Levitt's take on property rights and how they factor in:
I almost always believe in free markets as the solution to problems, but this one is tricky.  There are not a whole lot of things that I think governments are particularly good at doing, but protecting property rights is at or near the top of that list.
This reminded me of  Niall Ferguson's TED talk, The 6 Killer Aps of Prosperity: competition, the Scientific Revolution, property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society, and "the work ethic".

Do you think our legislators will refer to the lessons of human history when deciding the future of internet history?

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Crabs that build galaxies



Another reading list: GigaOm


7 stories to read this weekend

Longform: War Criminals

I'm finding longform journalism a lot more useful in satisfying my daily curiousity than novels and non-fiction. Being able to read, digest, and contemplate a piece in a single sitting makes me feel more efficient.
This is why I have become a big fan of the web-aggregator Longform.org and for regularly featured authors like David Grann, William Deresiewicz, and Mark Bowden. The website also does a lot of lists, which makes things easy. 
The best stories ever written about war criminals on the lam

Harvard Econ on Taxes

NY Times
Economist Greg Mankiw of Greg Mankiw's blog suggests four keys to a better tax system:
  • Broaden the base and lower the rates
  • Tax consumption
  • Tax bads rather than goods
  • Keep it simple 

Defense ≠ championships

This is according to  Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim and their post over at Freakonomics.

How did the 9/11 wars change the Army?

Popular Mechanics.com

What do you think?

Studying teenager web use



The NYT has a piece about a 34 year old Phd who is studying children's use of social media. I'm glad someone is doing it. 
Dr. [Danah] Boyd — a senior researcher at Microsoft, an assistant professor at New York University and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard
“The single most important thing about Danah is that she’s the first anthropologist we’ve got who comes from the tribe she’s studying,”

Video: Yon's MedEvac crusade goes mainstream


Michael Yon, from TBD and blog infamy, has been fighting for armed MedEvac helos for a while now. But this is the first time I've seen the mainstream media give the issue air time. (the link points to the CBS evening news website but I saw the story on Sunday Morning)

Algorithms rule the world

I wish I better understood algorithms and software logic.

The algorithms alive and kicking all around us

Income and Mobility

An interesting post from Freakonomics:
Is Higher Income Inequality Associated with Lower Intergenerational Mobility?

Video: Gladwell on spaghetti sauce

MentalFloss has a theme of posting lecture videos. This is a good one.

The risk of selling your electronics

Used Scanner Found with Thousands of Stored Check Images

Pakistan Update

A post over at TBD succinctly describes the situation in Pakistan:
Pakistan is an ongoing tragedy. Its military refuses to give up power, its huge stake in the economy and its privileges, while its politicians refuse to govern wisely or honestly and decline to carry out basic economic reforms such as taxing themselves.

News Flash: PE teachers are dumb

The Education Testing Service (ETS) keeps all kinds of stats and apparently PE teachers come from the low end of the already low average that make up teaching majors.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

A Narco-Criminal-insurgency primer



Small Wars Journal has been covering this topic for a while and here is a good roll-up. 
This post is focused on one document that I found particularly useful, Criminal Insurgencies in Mexico and the Americas, by Dr. Robert J. Bunker. It is a report to the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere about the current threat in the Americas. It is a useful primer for understanding the current issues and arguments associated with narco-organizations.


The author summarizes the threat categories and the government policies to counter them. His central argument is that the countering efforts are not coordinated and the strategic situation has worsened over the last 30 years. In response, he recommends the Merida Initiative be replaced by a "more encompassing Western Hemispheric Strategy".

I don't agree with his claim that drug cartels and narco-gangs are the "#1 strategic threat to the United States", but next to global malign-Iranian influence, I do think they will pose the most  significant asymmetric problem for US forces in the future. At a minimum AWG should stay connected to the community of interest associated with this threat and maintain currency.


If the US military is asked to play a larger role in the countering effort (probable considering the expansion of the problem set, the militarization of the criminal organizations, the proximity to the homeland, and the political implications) AWG will likely be asked to support.

Alcoholic icecream

Could this be the fabled perpetual motion of recipes!

Leno reviews the new Mclaren

There is a cool report over at Wired.com about the new Mclaren supercar.

Photo: Cork Art

10 Things Steakhouses won't tell you

a list from Smartmoney.com

TBD: Army Leadership


This is an old link that I wanted to post. It is the best analysis of the Army's current leadership issues that I have seen in a while.
"The primary purpose of detailed orders is not battlefield success, but rather the protection of field-grade and flag officer careers. In ten years of war, no Army general has relieved a fellow flag officer for battlefield failure.... When a small unit gets in trouble, senior commanders find cover in SOPs thick enough to stop an OER bullet. (I told the troops not to beat detainees; it's right here on page 11.) Rather than preventing battlefield failure, detailed planning often enables it. Senior officers can survive almost any debacle so long as there's a FRAGO and a captain between them and the problem."

Cyberdefense: Stuxnet

Threatpost.com has an update that provides some new details to the Stuxnet story that Wired got a lot of kudos for back in  July. Interesting stuff.

Chinese Espionage


Here is an interesting article about possible Chinese intelligence ops. I think foreign (e.g. Chinese) espionage poses the trickiest strategic threat to the US. Our strategic competitive advantage increasingly relies on our commercial (and defense) secrets. The international playing field is leveled when our advancements are known. We are historically bad at keeping secrets but global companies and information networks also make them more available. That's why I think counterespionage and counterintelligence--two traditionally lower priority missions--are going to be booming industries in both the public and private arenas.
"I don’t think American universities or think tanks take CICIR’s intelligence-collection or disinformation tasks seriously...”