On November 10th 1775 before there was a United States the Continental Marines were formed as a naval infantry. Thus November 10th is the best day of the entire year. Marines serve as a separate armed service within the department…
Vote: The definition of American
I wake up, get up, shower and shave, walk the kids to school, then walk to the polling location. Yes I said walk. In my small town with the leaves turning from spring green to fall gold democracy in action…
A plan: Refutation of mavericks and hopes of change
The 2008 Presidential election is guaranteed to be historic simply based on the candidates. We will either have our first black president or first woman vice president. Not unlike previous election cycles as recently as Herbert Walker Bush the economy…
White swans: Along with ducks spray painted black
When I received “The black swan: The impact of the highly improbable” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Random House, New York, 2007), I was intrigued by a view into the financial world of high finance. In the interest of saving you…
VP Debate 2008: Wordle to the wise
Sometimes you just want to look at the various tools of the Internet and find out interesting things regarding the politicians you are watching run for office. A tool called Wordle takes strings of text and then creates a cloud…
Will you be helped by the Wall Street bail out? Likely not.
The events of the past few days has my mind spinning. We are actually looking at the breaking point for the economy. Again. Wall Street is in trouble. Again. I have a few thoughts about this.
A possible information operations curriculum
I have been working on an information operations graduate/masters degree curriculum using the sections, topics, and strategies found in Information Operations (JP3-13) as a starting point for course titles, and course learning objectives. The expectation is that each course would…
Academic Questions: Special issue “The military and higher education”
Small Wars Journal accepted advertising from the National Association of Scholars presenting Academic Questions as an upcoming publication. Published as an academic journal by Springer I was both intrigued and worried. As an academic I sort through the normal morass…
To whom or what is your primary loyalty?
Earlier today John Robb posted an article on the hollow state. Michael Tanji at HOTS rejoinders with to whom or what is your primary loyalty? Further he asked where would you get your intelligence (as in information)? That is a worthy question…
The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science Strategy and War
The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science, Strategy, and War forward by Thomas Barnett and edited by Mark Safranski It is almost a formalized tradition of the Greek philosophers for the students of notable thinkers to gather together the lectures and scribe…
Financial meltdown: Well what did you expect?
Sometimes a simple thinking exercise will allow an individual to consider the relative merits of an argument without having to toss together a hypothesis and test it empirically. For example, the paragons of the financial world and political adventurers…
Blog Tank: A National Cyber Security Policy
An idea that “Haft of the Spear” had was to blog tank a policy paper. With a little bit of trickery we’ve moved some of the content over to the Wiki. Check out this link for more information. The idea…
Statement about flooding
I realize that many people have incurred incredible loss and are devastated by the flooding caused by IKE. For my students all assignments are due as normal, but nobody will be penalized for not attending classes this week (September 14th).…
Northwest Indiana Flood: September 2008
Driving into the grocery store today I took some pictures. . Looking around I grabbed one screen shot that pretty much puts the totality into perspective too. Read on to see a few pictures.
Cyberwarfare or hooliganism: A short consideration of the difference
Media reports have created a meme that any or all conflict that occurs in cyber space is cyber warfare. This is an injurious concept of the conflicts within cyber space. It leads to gross generalizations and political punditry that could…