Iran’s satellite launch earlier this month should have been a wake-up call. Instead, the West has reached over and hit the snooze button.
We’d rather think we were only dreaming.
Good morning!
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 22, 2009
Posted in Orient, Packing heat, Stragety | Leave a Comment »
College punks suspended
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 21, 2009
NYU’s administration doesn’t think collegiate protest is so groovy when you’re The Man:
After renewed calls for negotiations between NYU officials and student body protestors after a night of intense rioting, those who were still barricaded in the college cafeteria Friday have finally ended their sit-in protest.
I have never understood what leverage students have that they’re allowed to “protest” and “barricade” and “demand” anything. This problem started in the 1960’s and somehow there is still this concept that students have “rights” to force their school to do things. Ah, but see what kind of punks we’re talking about here, after all:
The students wanted NYU to release information on its budget and endowment, including staff salaries and financial aid. The students also wanted the university to release its investment strategy and the names of the people and firms involved in it.
Ooh, yeah. Students are much more knowledgeable about this stuff and they should for sure be in charge of that sort of thing. No, wait, it gets better:
The protesters also have made the Palestinian-Israeli conflict part of their cause, demanding the university donate “excess supplies and materials” to help rebuild a university damaged in December by Israeli air raids. They also want NYU to provide annual scholarships to Palestinian students, beginning in the 2009-10 school year.
Oh, that kind of punk! Well, sure. NYU is pretty much behind that Israeli oppression and stuff. That explains that.
Punks. Give NYU credit for eventually drawing some sort of line, however fuzzy and dotted. Let’s see how fast their daddies run to the courthouse to get those big bad “suspensions” lifted — and how fast NYU folds on the punishment of its punks.
UPDATE: Instapundit rounds up reactions to the pathetic dénouement.
Posted in Edumacallit, Liberal punks, Narcissus Rex | 3 Comments »
Topical depression
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 20, 2009
Eric Rall has a very thoughtful and well written piece on Dean’s World about what economic depressions really have been, can be, and how — maybe — they do and don’t come to an end.
It would be a good thing to read if your economic history is anywhere as weak as the vast majority of people in, uh, politics, economics and journalism.
Posted in Gelt, Past is prologue | 2 Comments »
No takers
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 20, 2009
Popehat on the F-15‘s hoary origins:
Our air supremacy is built on the same tech level of the 8-track tape, and succeeds because no one will fly against it.
Not only won’t they fly against it — Saddam hid his MIG’s under the sand just at the thought of tangling with the F-15.
Worth remembering.
UPDATE:
Я не читаю, или я говорю на русском языке. Таким образом я удаляю все российские комментарии как спам. Это не является личным, но если Вы комментируете на русском языке, предположения, здесь – против Вас: Если Вы можете прочитать быстро через мой blog, Вы можете прокомментировать на английском языке!
Posted in Nuvo-Techno, Packing heat | 11 Comments »
“They’ve got an extra bathroom in a house they can’t afford to live in”
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 19, 2009
The Chicago tea party — born of a trading floor harangue by a CNBC business editor?
They’re screaming about this, by the way.
Posted in Gelt, Politics and Poker | Leave a Comment »
In a strange land
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 19, 2009
David Kelsey explains how out of synch the mainstream Jewish organizational elite is from any conception of what is really in America’s best interests.
That’s all of America. Of which some people seem to forget they are part.
Posted in Faith and Works, Oppression, Past is prologue | Leave a Comment »
Me on TV!
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 17, 2009
Not really. It’s Pajamas Media TV. Not the same thing.
But it looks the same on your computer!
I think we’re getting better at this. Here, take a look.
OK, back to work now. This stuff doesn’t pay.
Posted in Blogophilia, Medialites, Narcissus Rex | 2 Comments »
Diagnosis confirmed
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 17, 2009
I’ve been saying for years how dangerous this is:
Paul Schipper, an avid skier who obsessively hit the slopes every day of the season for more than 24 years, has died. He was 85.
Cut down in the prime because he wouldn’t just sit down and read a book already.
When will people hear?
Posted in Jocularity | 5 Comments »
Who are you to say?
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 17, 2009
Police say an upstate New York television executive who sought to improve the image of Muslims in the media beheaded his wife after she filed for divorce.
I’m not judging. I’m just saying that, given his interests career-wise, this does not seem like the move.
Posted in Faith and Works, Oppression, Suburbia | Leave a Comment »
Von Clausewitz, calculation and perception
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 16, 2009
Zenpundit over at Chicago Boyz questions the assertion by von Clausewitz that the challenge of a comprehensible military reality has almost the same effect as the acceptance of that challenge and actual engagement. This is because the playing out of that scenario in an adversary’s strategic calculus is little different than it being played out on the battlefield, except for the slight matter of the cost in blood and gold, and of course the chance that everyone is guessing wrong about the outcome.
Mark Safranski, the author of the post (he is Zenpundit), says von Clausewitz places too much stock in not only the quality of information about strategic reality — a surprising error considering the master’s own teaching regarding the fog of war — but the quality of, well, thinking:
Cultural differences, too, when civilizations are at war, create a cognitive “fog” for commanders. Alien value systems create a “noise” that interferes with the “signal” intended by the offer of engagement by one side to the another. They will not be calculated “right” because the shared understanding of war and the valuation of objectives is much more limited. The Iran-Iraq war dragged on as a Middle-Eastern version of WWI primarily because of the differences in worldview between the leadership of Saddam Hussein’s secular, Baathist, Sunni dominated, Arab, Iraq and the radical Shiism of Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary, Persian, Iran. Two countries in the center of the same Muslim civilization! How much greater is the “fog” between Washington and the hills of Pushtunistan where al Qaida’s leaders reside?
This is not to say that Clausewitz’s principle of possible engagement does not exist under conditions of opacity, it just offers far less data to work with for the commander. The “unknown unknowns” predominate.
Indeed, can’t it be fairly argued that the great Prussian really was a victim here of his own cultural limitations? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Homo sapiens, Past is prologue, Stragety | 8 Comments »
