Money as a Brainwashing Tool

October 11, 2010Hubris, Politics, Social, World

So, a lot of brouhaha in the news recently about where money that American organizations spend on American political campaigns comes from, foreign money being bad.

I’m not all that worked up about the issue. I’m a little leery at the idea of foreign interests meddling in our elections. They should mind their own business. But at the same time, that kind of crap works a lot better in the systems they’re used to, thinly veiled or open dictatorships, or rule by the elite; and not so well in an actual functioning democratic republic. Which is probably why we’ve had so much success meddling in other peoples elections over the years.

But in the end, in our country, an election is about the candidates and their ideas. If people are voting for someone because they’ve seen them in more TV spots, the fault lies not with the people who paid for those TV spots but with the morons making their decisions that way.

Money can have a huge effect on an election but the only legitimate gripe is if a candidate’s ideas are never heard by the electorate due to a lack of funds. In this, the information age, that’s less and less of a concern. A voter going to the polls while uninformed has only himself to blame today. Trying to shift that blame from the voter to the evil corporations or foreign investors who failed to inform him through TV is missing the point entirely and taking it as a given that the voters are mindless sheep.

The constitution was not written with mindless sheep in mind. Perhaps the voters ARE mindless sheep though. The fact remains that nobody forced them to be that way.

The fact that the candidate with the most money often wins is either a sad commentary on the ignorance of our citizens or a demonstration that those citizens voted with their pocketbooks before ever going to the polls. Since foreign interests can’t do the latter, their influence is limited entirely to those who are too stupid to think for themselves. Meh. We reap what we sow.

Bonus link

Not going to war

October 10, 2010Hubris, Humor, National Guard, Politics, Social, Soldiering, Terrorism, War

Not going to war, for most people, is a good thing. Not all.

What could I possibly mean by that, you may ask with a suspicious and horrified look? Who is this ‘all’ you speak of in the negative?

Surely, war is bad. Yes it is. There are still worse things.

Surely, no one sane would WANT their country to go to war. Absolutely true. No one sane wants their country to go to war. In the same way no one wants to have to shoot a burglar in their house.

Surely, no one sane wants, personally, to go to war. Meh, yes and no. I’m sure there are people who would very cogently and succinctly make the point that I am not sane. For I want to go to war.

Surely I have done my part, having already been to war. Surely I could now stay home, honor satisfied, and enjoy my family. Yes, I have, and yes I could. But the war is not over. In some ways it is just beginning. There are still parts to be played, and if not by me, then by who?

I’m thinking about this because of a good friend of mine, who also wants to go to war. The difference for him is that he has not yet been.

My unit is a good one. We have deployed companies to the war on terror three times and once an entire battalion. Collectively we have killed a whole grundle of bad men who desperately needed killing, and helped a whole bunch of other people who needed help. We have done well, collecting honors and accolades. We have yet to lose a man to the war.

The last deployment, though, was a few years ago and the next has been pushed back so far that many of the men in my unit despaired of ever going back and left, seeking other units who ARE deploying soon, or contracting jobs with the famed “military industrial complex.” (My unit doesn’t typically attract the sort who only join the military for the college benefits though most of us have used them to good effect)

My friend is considering attaching himself to a unit in another state that is deploying but finds itself critically short of men with our expertise. I’m considering going with him. It’s a hard sell for a man in my position, but can I let my friend go alone?

We would all prefer that there were no wars, no oppression, no murder, no crime. MacArthur was right when he said:

The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

Yet, if our country is at war, we want to go. It’s what drove us to join the military in the first place.

Bonus link

Jump tomorrow

October 7, 2010Hubris, National Guard, Soldiering, War

And it’s on a brand new dropzone. The third in as many months.

No one in our unit has ever jumped it. I sure hope I can figure out where we are before leading the way out of the plane.

Edit: Well, we lived and it was one of the nicest jumps I’ve done.

Soft opening. Sherpas or C-23s usually are since they’re so slow.

Soft landing. Farmer’s field with dirt like talcum powder combined with very low winds.

Pretty. The landscape in Western Eagle Mountain Valley actually looks more like the pic on the right than I expected. Put more mountains on the horizon and you’ve pretty much got it. Considering the pic on the right is actually over Germany that’s saying something.

The Holy Mill of Murder

October 3, 2010Politics, Spiritual, War

Mankind as it is constituted, is a boil and a canker. Observe the specimens of any nation. Man is weak, greedy, craven, lustful, prey to every species of depravity and vice. He will lie, cheat, steal, murder, melt down the very statues of the gods and coin their gold as money for whores. This is man. This is his nature, as all the poets attest.
“Fortunately God in his mercy, has provided a counterpoise to our species’ innate depravity. That gift…, is war.
“War, not peace, produces virtue. War, not peace, purges vice. War, and preparation for war, call forth all that is noble and honorable in man. It unites him with his brothers and binds them in selfless love, eradicating in the crucible of necessity, all which is base and ignoble. There in the holy mill of murder, the meanest of men may seek and find that part of himself, concealed beneath the corrupt, which shines forth brilliant and virtuous, worthy of honor before the gods. Do not despise war, nor delude yourself that mercy and compassion are superior virtues, to manly valor.”

Polynikes of Sparta – 480 B.C.

I haven’t traced the origin of this quote. I attribute it as I have above because it matches what I’ve heard over the years. If the attribution is wrong please correct me. And no, I don’t think Steven Pressfield was the first to say this.

Monster Hunter Vendetta

October 2, 2010Fantasy, War, Writing

The Monster Hunter series is a bit of a phenom in my book. Larry Correia, the author, self-published the first installment, Monster Hunter International. Due to his connections in the world of guns and shooting instruction and general firearms badassery, as well as it being an awesome fun read, it sold a few thousand copies. He got picked up by Baen and now the sequel is out. Monster Hunter Vendetta.

I saw Larry the other day at authorpalooza in a Barnes & Noble. Still a really nice guy and fun to talk to. I bought MHV, had him sign it and I’m halfway through it now. Just as fun, irreverent, and mile-a-minute as the first one.

But the cover quote. It’s a little odd. “Fast-paced action sequences and ultra-accurate firearms details.” Ultra-accurate firearms details?

It’s true enough. Larry is a master of his trade. His firearms details are ultra-accurate. But the book has a much broader appeal than that. No doubt readers of Gun World, where the author of that quote, Jerry Ahern, writes appreciate ultra-accurate firearms details more than most but…the books have so much more as well.

The books have cool twists and emotional depth and really good pacing and nifty ideas. They’re just plain fun to read.

Edit: So, I just finished reading MHV. So cool. Not a wasted paragraph. The end is as epically awesome as the first and the ride there as thrilling and fast paced as anything I’ve ever read. An absolute blast.

Deadly Owls

October 1, 2010Humor, Web Comics

I really liked this White Ninja.

Blindly Writing the Elephant

October 1, 2010Fantasy, Hubris, Scientifiction, Uncategorized, Writing

So, I’m almost completely done with my second novel. This is the one I’m collaborating with Brandon Sanderson on. Working title: The Lurker.

I think I’ve smashed my face against, then managed to wrap my arms around, a writing principle worth sharing.

I started with a 10,000 word outline that Brandon wrote. We discussed the world and basic plot we would be working with for about four hours over two meetings before he wrote the outline.

I wrote my first novel with an outline too, a numbered list. I can’t speak for Brandon on The Lurker but for me, coming up with an outline was a very mechanical process.

Arbitrarily I aimed for 120,000 words which translated neatly into 30 4,000 word chapters. My outline had 30 chapters in it. Three viewpoint characters translated to 10 chapters each. Three try/fail cycles worked out to three chapters per cycle per character, which I dutifully labeled as such on my outline.

Then I filled in the basic events for each cycle. What, exactly, were my characters failing and then succeeding at? What did their mini-arcs consist of and how did they fit into the big book-arc? I already had a basic idea of what I wanted the book to be about and lots of cool scenes that had written themselves in my head and so forth. That made this process a mix of putting the pieces in their proper places and filling in the blanks.

The elephant tromped into the room when it came time to actually write the chapters so summarized on my outline. I stepped forward, hands outstretched, and started feeling that guy.

It was my book. I knew the basic shape. So there was no, ‘Oh, this is a snake…’ garbage. But it was definitely a process of discovery as I wrote each chapter. Some details (a lot of them really) made themselves known, either springing from my subconscious or becoming obvious due to context. Others, also a lot, I had to forge and hammer out in the creative fires. And it was all fun to do.

Later I realized that things were much easier for me if I also outlined each chapter before I actually started in on the actual prose. In most cases, what I ended up with was less an outline for each chapter than notes on my brainstorming session for the chapter, roughly chrono-organized. Once I knew where I was going to that level of detail, getting there was almost all fun. The niftiest things pop up out of nowhere.

The principle? Same as always. Just climb on and write.

My process is definitely more mechanical than a pure discovery writer, but less mechanical than some outliners. It’s mine, it works for me. It will probably change. And someday I fully expect to discover that it’s not an elephant at all but a bloody Tiger, and have to change everything.

Thus ends my very first POST ON WRITING.

Working out, exercise.

September 30, 2010Fitness, Hubris, Social

A guy named Mark Rippetoe once said, “Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general.” I’ve found this to be true, not just in my military experiences, but in life generally.

I’m not talking about powerlifters. I’m talking about people who could help me move all my boxes of books without hurting themselves. People who could grab the A pillar of my car when I forget to put on the brake and keep it from rolling away while I do.

Nor am I talking about marathon runners. I’m talking about people who could run up five flights of stairs and tell me the building’s on fire without losing consciousness in the middle of the critical sentence. People who could take the scout troop on a hike or a bike ride and not get left behind.

Like the man said, ‘more useful in general.’

Where are these people? I look around and it seems there are fewer everyday.

In fact, the US is finally emerging from a long awkward period where, in the collective consciousness, being ‘in shape’ meant being either a powerlifter or a marathon runner. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with being a powerlifter or a marathon runner. The problem was not with the disciplines themselves. The problem was that people grew up thinking that anything different or less focused was not worthwhile. The concept of simply being in the kind of shape that would allow you to do a lot of varied physical work was lost. If you didn’t want to be a boulder or a stick figure, exercising was not for you. We are the poorer for it.

There’s a new movement out there that focuses on ‘capacity for work’ when it comes to exercising. It stresses the right things, in my opinion, and can be scaled to any desired level of intensity. Alas, I fear that my generation may largely be lost to it.

Working out under this school of thought is still hard. Varied work doesn’t mean easy work. The deal with the wall is still the same: “You hit the wall and the wall moves back an inch. Repeat.” The varied routines and exercises are more interesting to work through, but you still have to fight through the suck if you want to improve.

In my opinion one of the easiest places to start is CrossFit. Read up, be smart, and regularly push past your limits. It won’t take you long and as you learn it will get easier.

I promise you’ll feel better. Your body was designed to get stronger.

EthanSkar

One word at a time.

Jump tomorrow

The Holy Mill of Murder

Monster Hunter Vendetta

Deadly Owls

Blindly Writing the Elephant