Proactively “From the Sea”; an agent of change leveraging the littoral best practices for a paradigm breaking six-sigma best business case to synergize a consistent design in the global commons, rightsizing the core values supporting our mission statement via the 5-vector model through cultural diversity.
In a PETA campaign scheduled to launch in October, Che Guevara’s 24 year-old granddaughter, Lydia, poses half naked with the tag line ‘join the vegetarian revolution.’
Oh, how cute. Maybe Pol Pot's grandchildren will one day help sell blue zip-loc baggies by wearing them as hats or sump'n.
At last ... it is about time. I just hope he can find a Democrat with seniority to back him.
A California congressman who served two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan convinced the House Armed Services Committee to order a full review of the criteria used for giving awards for gallantry and valor after a senior defense official said technological advancements and new combat tactics might be the reason fewer of the highest medals are being issued.
At the urging of Rep. Duncan D. Hunter, R-Calif., a Marine combat veteran elected to Congress in November, the armed services committee has asked for a review of trends in awarding the Medal of Honor to determine if the low number of awards in the current wars is the result of “inadvertent subjective bias amongst commanders.”
The committee also wants the Defense Department to survey officers and noncommissioned officers in leadership positions to look at attitudes about acts of valor. Hunter is looking for the reasons behind not just fewer nominations, but also a trend since the Vietnam War in which the only Medal of Honor awards have been for people who died during an act of valor.
While we are discussing today the evils of Transformationalism - will somebody please hit Gail McGinn with a ClueBat?
In a June 2 letter to Hunter that was released Wednesday, Gail McGinn, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said defense officials see nothing amiss in the Peralta decision.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who made the final call, “was advised by five independent reviewers who all individually concluded that the evidence included in the [Medal of Honor] recommendation did not support the award,” McGinn wrote.
The reviewers included a former commanding general of Marine forces in Iraq, a neurosurgeon, two pathologists and a Medal of Honor recipient, McGinn said.
Her letter also responds to Hunter’s larger question about whether the criteria have changed over time. A 2008 review of guidance used in making the awards “found no evidence of a posthumous requirement, either written or unwritten,” she said.
What has changed, McGinn said, is warfare. U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq “are inherently different from previous major conflicts,” she said.
Not only is that not based on fact (perhaps she should talk to Gen. Mattis) that is a huge insult to all those who have taken ground and engaged the enemy the same as others have throughout our history: face to face, hand to hand.
We could spend hours with examples from Iraq and Afghanistan alone that would prove that from the tactical standpoint (Where Medal of Honor are won), there is no difference between the fighting now and the fighting in 1969, 1951, 1944, 1918, 1898, 1863, 1066 .... amazing someone at that level in that position could say something so out of alignment with reality,
Let's set some foundational truths. General Mattis, USMC is one if not the premier military minds of his generation. I count as an honor that I have worked with him.
He is also the most senior antitransformationalists we have. Here is what I ask of you. Look at your calendar today. Find an hour - if you don't have one eat your lunch at your desk. If that doesn't work, wait until you get home and the 'lil ones are in bed and the honey-do list is done. Get a cup of coffee or tumbler of good single malt, and then watch the video below.
Be in awe. I am. If you are running short of time, go to the 35:00 point.
Before we get to that though, get the Executive Summary about what he will speak of. Once again, General Mattis, USMC finds the right point of vulnerability.
US Marine Corps General James Mattis, head of US Joint Forces Command, cautioned against the military becoming too reliant on technology and command-and-control (C2) systems, which he believes could increase vulnerability.
During a 1 June speech in Washington, Gen Mattis, who also serves as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation, called for moderating "our idea that technology is going to solve this human problem called war".
I really wish I could find a full transcript of this speech. Here is the meat of the article behind the firewall;
"War, he said, is primarily "a human endeavor [and] a social problem", so the US military should be careful in assuming what solutions technology might provide because its enemies have a history of avoiding their foe's strengths and exploiting weaknesses.
Overly relying on technical C2 systems and centralized decision making woudl cause the US military to become the "single most vulnerable military in the world", Gen. Mattis warned. Data and communications networks represent a 'single point of failure' that could be attacked, resulting in disabled command structures.
Exactly, hitting on a theme we touch on here on a regular basis, over reliance on technology is a false economy when you actually have to go to war. If you rely too much on the electronic spectrum and don't have a back-up ready to go - you will be defeated.
Gen. Mattis is a national treasure. There, I said it.
We literally put our nation at Strategic and National risk by putting all our eggs in transformationalist ideas. Fact trumps theory. Lead and steel trump PPT. I cannot think of a person who understands this better, or makes a better argument about this subject, than Gen. Mattis.
On a larger scale, if you want to know the worst case scenario, out on the tail end of the bell curve, where our arrogant faith in non-robust technology and blinkered view about our critical vulnerabilities can go, check out what I am listening to now, William R. Forstchen's One Second After.
One thing I don't share all that much here is my passion for hunting - bird hunting to be specific. On top of all that, I am a Spaniel guy. Smaller the better.
For most of this decade, my favorite writer of the genre has been Chad S. Mason and his "A Bird Hunter's Diary" at GunDog Magazine.
You can't find it online, yet - but in the June/July edition of the magazine, we find that Chad has decided to stop writing.
It has often said that the wise out there pick their time - that if you listen close enough, you will know ... and the wise follow what they hear.
It isn't online ... I don't think Chad will mind, and I link to and highly encourage everyone to subscribe to GunDog Magazine, so I got the OCR software working right.
Even if you are not a hunter or lover of dogs - I recommend the read, mostly because you will see why I enjoyed reading him so much.
IF MEMORY SERVES, my first "Bird Hunter's Diary" column appeared in 2002. That would mean I've written almost 50 of these for a total of somewhere around 70,000 words. Looking back now, every word has been worth the writing and some of them perhaps have been worth reading. With mixed feelings, I now tum the last leaf in a book that has gone tattered, because it has gone exposed into many a thorny place.
You have been good to me, so I feel that you are owed an explanation for my departure. That may seem like a funny thing to say, since we have not even been formally introduced. But more than a few of you have, over the years, contacted me by phone or letter to express compliments and gratitude. Some of you have invited me to hunt with you, and your invitations I still keep in a special drawer in my desk, even if I have not been able (yet) to take you up on the offers.
A few more have been less charitable, but at least they were honest. Anyway, I suspect that we may in fact have met without knowing it. If you've ever arrived to hunt on public land in Iowa or Minnesota, and got there just in time to see a skinny fellow walking away from a dented old Dodge Neon-parked in your favorite spot-with a little black dog in front of him, well, that was me. Sorry I got there first. If it's any consolation, I never took too mauy.
For several years I have made a little bit less than a living as an outdoor writer. Little bits can accumulate over time, however, eventually amounting to quite a bit. So there is a bare, pragmatic, financial reason for my departure, but that is not finally the deciding factor. (You don't need to worry about me, by the way; I recently landed a "real job.")
John Lennon said, ~~Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." That's one of the few things he said that I agree with, and somewhere in those words is the reason I cannot write any more stories about hunting, at least for a while. About the time you read this, I'll wake up one morning and turn 40-not old, by any means, but older than I've ever been. A week before that, my oldest daughters will become teenagers; the week after, Rascal will turn 77 in dog years. Nobody is quite sure what happened to 'the years between these momentous milestones and the time Rascal and I went dawn-to-dusk in steep, slippery, snowy country on six young legs. Some time has gone missing, and stealthily so.
Other changes too have come upon me unaware, riding as stowaways on the years. At age 12, I bought my first outdoor magazine at the IGA Foods store in Greenville, Kentucky, and read it cover to cover. From then on, an outdoor writer was all I ever wanted to be. It still seems almost incredulous to me that I actually pulled it off, that there have been so many people willing to pay me to hunt, fish, and tell stories about hunting and fishing. Men who were my idols are now just a few pages away, to my left and to my right. They love what they do and I still admire them, but now I am surprised by a burning desire within myself to simply hunt, and not to hunt for a living. I want to walk the fields like you, without having to produce a tale or a picture.
One of my favorite writers is an Oregonian named Ted Leeson. In his wonderful book of fly fishing essays, Jerusalem Creek, Leeson observes that he tends to re-evaluate life every 10 years or so, shaking things up and rearranging. So I was probably overdue last summer when I walked into an antique shop in Des Moines,just tagging along with my parents, and found my grandfather's hunting coat hanging on a peg. Just like the one he had worn, it was made of stiff brown canvas with a soft flannel back liner and a corduroy collar. It had no tags and no logo, a relic from a less brand-conscious era when hunters were not walking billboards. Held shut by only three plastic buttons, it offered proof that there once was a time when hunters did not expect to be as comfortable outdoors as they arc indoors. It was pristine, and a perfect fit. Even for an outdoor writer, it was an easy decision at only $15.
My grandfather never got paid to go hunting, but he did have a few hunting magazines around in his later years. He mined coal for almost 35 years. He hunted on his days off, or whenever he was laid off. He hunted rabbits, squirrels and quail, and he ate them. Generally he fried them. If he was feeling fancy, he made gravy to go with them. As long as I. knew him, he shot everything with the same gun, a Remington Model 1100 Light 20. After an aneurysm had taken my grandmother, he remarried to a widowed schoolteacher w~o had done well saving her money. She bought him the 1100 on their first anniversary. She died in 1993 and he followed several months later.
Late last fall, I sold all my shotguns except his. At some point he had carved his initials (L.M.) into the plastic butt plate with his pocketknife. My father bought a new stock for the gun two years ago, because Granddad beat hell out of the old one, taking it exposed through many a thorny place. But we kept the butt plate. Granddad's initials remain visible, and seem to us like the signature on a cheap card that comes with an expensive gift, but for some reason never gets thrown away.
All of that is to say that the old canvas coat has provoked some re-evaluation of life, and some rearranging. This year I'll be hunting less, and enjoying it more.
My belief in the importance of this column has made it hard to quit even when I knew that I should. Besides practical information on bird hunting and the dogs that make it worth doing, this column offers at least occasional opportunities for celebration, questioning, lament, laughter and protest. I've attempted to explore all of the above at one time or another, while trying to avoid self-righteousness. If I have failed, the fault is entirely mine. If I have succeeded, I cannot accept all the credit; I had good role models.
Hopefully the editor can find someone to take up this concept and continue writing about the things that occur to people when they are out hunting. As for me, I'll probably still jot a few things down and save them up.
Thank you, and good night.
Another of his bits that had me nodd'n my head awhile back is here.
Well done Chad - it was a good run, and I think you are going out in this venue on top. I hope to read you again somewhere soon. If not, thanks.
BZ to Berlin --- a proper tribute to a simple man, who in a simple act symbolized a reality of Communism and offered hope to some and inspiration to most.
A sad ending though for a man, who through a simple act, helped so much the cause of freedom.
On 15 August 1961 he found himself, aged 19, guarding the Berlin Wall, then in its third day of construction, at the corner of Ruppinerstraße and Bernauerstraße. At that stage of construction, the Berlin Wall was only a low barbed wire fence. As the people on the Western side shouted Komm rüber! ("come over"), Schumann jumped the barbed wire and was driven away at high speeds by a waiting West Berlin police car. Photographer Peter Leibing captured a photograph of his escape on film and it became a well-known image of the Cold War.
Schumann was later permitted to travel from West Berlin to the main territory of West Germany, where he settled in Bavaria. He met his wife Kunigunde in the town of Günzburg.[1]
After the fall of the Berlin Wall he said, "Only since 9 November 1989 [the date of the fall] have I felt truly free". Even so, he continued to feel more at home in Bavaria than in his birthplace, citing old frictions with his former colleagues, and he even hesitated about visiting his parents and brothers and sisters in Saxony. On 20 June 1998, suffering from depression, he hanged himself in his orchard near the town of Kipfenberg in Oberbayern.
One act in time though, Fullbore.
As a side note - how many of you catch the meaning of Jude's alblum Cuba cover?
... a salamander resembling E.T. and dubbed the ugly salamander. salamanders of this particular genus are rare, nocturnal forest dwellers that, in Ecuador arent generally found in forests above 3200 feet.
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, Leeson observes that he tends to re-evaluate life every 10 years or so, shaking things up and rearranging. So I was probably overdue last summer when I walked into an antique shop in Des Moines,just tagging along with my parents, and found my grandfather's hunting coat hanging on a peg. Just like the one he had worn, it was made of stiff brown canvas with a soft flannel back liner and a corduroy collar. It had no tags and no logo, a relic from a less brand-conscious era when hunters were not walking billboards. Held shut by only three plastic buttons, it offered proof that there once was a time when hunters did not expect to be as comfortable outdoors as they arc indoors. It was pristine, and a perfect fit. Even for an outdoor writer, it was an easy decision at only $15.
cover?
