Abu Muqawama retains its autonomy and the views and beliefs expressed within the blog do not reflect those of CNAS.
Now that I am no longer blogging on a daily basis, the best way to see what has caught my eye in a given day is by following this blog's Twitter feed. I know it can be an annoying bit of technology (not to mention a wee presumptuous to think you would want to read what I read), but it's a convenient way for me to link to articles and books of note.
How tall is Nicole Kidman?
Just wondering.
ADTS
WaPo:
Accountability or Scapegoating?
"Both the squadron and brigade commanders overseeing the Kamdesh outpost had been pressing to close it for months after they determined that it made no sense to keep troops in the area." But they got reprimanded or admonished anyway.
You wanna have a ramp up in troops and ops and for PC COIN at that, but have the zero defects mindset towards causalities?
It's so difficult to tell if you weren't part of the events or the investigation, but it looks like scapegoat driven from that story. Which BTW is not really the thrust of the WaPo article, but my take.
I'm trying hard to like this Pope guy and support the guys downrange, but this is the kind of thing that makes that difficult.
"the best way to see what has caught my eye in a given day is by following this blog's Twitter feed."
Unless you work at a government workstation that has blocked Twitter access, similar to the way folks couldn't get to your old blog.
Which, as I recall, was one of the stated reasons for moving to a CNAS blog.
Just sayin'.
Celebrity Pundit takes up Twitter!
WHY not just keep this blog to a few short sentences.... like the Angry Arab.
Geez....People have way too much money........
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6135OH20100204
Yeah, I am the first to call myself a six-sigma case ( for the non-stats guys...sigma is a qaulitative measure of variance from a population average...six-sigma means that your almost an outlier in a gausian distribution). I have spent my life enabling the digital world (telephony, cells phones, worked on 3G in '98, wireless computing in '99). I waited for the 486 processor to come out while my peers were pissing there money off creating a pile of computer trash in India and making a retirement for Bill Gate's next 16 generations. Now we can put our cells on the heap. We keep it up, we are going to turn the earth into a cinder block! Why should I buy a home computer? My employer put a $10,000 workstation on my desk!
When we started off-shoring, one day I was walking down a hall way at work lined with "pizza-boxes" stacked about 20 high. Person was stacking more in the hall way. As I walked by the stacker I commented, "Boy, that is a lot of computers". By the time I get to the end of the hall way the response came back,"Yup, each one was a person".
Ain't the Internet great, it enables so much, we can talk to anyone in the world.
I live by a major unversity, all the students have cell phones glued to their heads.......makes me wonder what we have done to our selves. All the computers are turned over in three years (electronics life is 15, tax write-off in 5, obsolete in 2, 3 is a compromise to reduce "cost". Marketing guys must have massive woodies with that business plan). Taxpayer is paying for a 802.11 wireless system(sorry I helped make it, it came out of secure government radio in the '90s military spending cuts to commercialized the technology)on the whole 50 odd acre campus(only to be ripped out and renewed in 3 years!). People are crying that there is never enough for education! ......A tenture PhD makes over $90,000, wants over $100,000....can not be fired....after 20 years gets health care and full pension for life.....AND gets 40% of the royalties from inventions while working on tax payer money.......
You should see the waste.....They have a employee that plays solitare all day (person asked for early retirement, University said no). We just had an additional 1% sales tax added for education. WHY?...NOT ENOUGH MONEY....go figure.
Not against technology, I helped make it. I just do not want to wake up some day and have to put a $100 bill in the slot to take my next breath. Think about it. Pull out all your billing reciepts and start adding them up. Do you know what the mark-up is on sending a text message???? You buy a lap top computer...the battery has a limited re-charge life. Lithium cells are like firecrackers(the newer chemistry is "more" stable than it use to be, still they are grumpy creatures...if you do not treat them right they argue), to reduce liability manufactures have electronics in "smart cells" to count re-charge cycles. The number of allowed recharge cycles pre-determined and part of the hardware. Do you know the replacement cost of lap top lithiums? Do you need 140 channels of TV? Land line or cell, how much do you pay to stay connected(look at all the funky add on charges)?
I just fired my VISA card company. Why? I am a dead-beat customer, I pay my bills on time. They wanted to charge me a $30 year fee, part of the respose to Obama's "save" the consumer legislation. VISA gets 3% of each transaction. I paid them $180 last year in 3% transaction fees. When I cancelled the card, I asked them, "Isn't $180 enough to send out 12 monthly statements at 0.50 postage each?". The response was, "No, we are doing this to everyone". Visa is taking the world for a ride!!!!! The infrastructure to enable VISA transactions is passed on to the consumer in our retail purchase and the 3% still goes to VISA(we all pay the 3% even if you use cash). Yes, you can live with out VISA......
Never had cable, cell phone is Net-ten when I need one, lap-top is a desk top running old software (sorry Bill Gates), still use the trusty old vacuum tube TV (HDTV forced me to get an roof top antenna and converter box, free government handout...first time I ever got a freebee????I paid for it in my taxes!).
Each morning I get up, light as a feather......and breath easy.
Sorry guys, I do not twitter.....I garden and grow my own food.......my next door neighbor hires illegals from Mexico to do his yard work. I talk to the Mexicans and the are amazed that do my own yard and gardening work! I am the funny yankee. By doing my yard work, I do not need a memberhship to a work-out club and it helps to reduce my health care bills ( need to do that so I can pay for the illegal yard worker's health care at the local ER room).
Line up boys/girls......spend you cash and get the economy rolling.....Wall Street needs it and Bill Gates is looking for more foundation money........
How did man kind ever make it to the 20th century without TWITTER!.....So much for Blogging....Time to prune my fruit trees, I hear gasoline is increasing this year and produce prices at the market will reflect the rate increases........
Really guys, I am crying.........We did it to ourselves. TWITTER.......PUKE.....sorry.
This is off subject...but while I am on the soap box......
The Tenure Professors making $90K that wants $100K+......are likely only to actually teach two classes a semester. The Grad students on the University's payroll teach the classes. I sat through classes listening to grad students with broken english. Why? The univerisity ($4B yrly budget) wants the 60% of the invention money. I went to my semiconductor physics professor for help after bombing my first exam. Found him in his lab with his grad students. Asked for help and the reply was,"I have my research to work on". I sweated out the rest of the semester and by the final, I had hacked out understanding and a B grade. Spent the rest of my life in the semiconductor business(another prof that retired that year was my mentor, he was from the old school...the one with teachers that taught students). Came back to find out what happened to the Semiconductor Physics professor that handled me so badly. He got his invention and retired on full pension. He used his invention money to by up apartment buildings on campus and rents them out to students. A lot of classes that I sweated in , I found out later, the students were using previous semester class notes and tests as study aids. The Frats were the worst, they kept libraries of class notes.......the profs did not change their classes or exams much, they were busy with their research!....publish or die.
Needless to say, I do not contribute to the Alumni fund, nor do I ask my employer to contribute. So much for a 3rd ranked Engineering College. I give each year when I pay my taxes and buy the products of the coporations that feed on inventions.
When a person holds out their hand for a contribution for Education....find out what is in it first before you dig deep. I am not sure that you can thank my Semiconductor Physics teacher for the circuits that I helped to generate, but I am sure that he TWITTERS with his renters about rent due. Not sure why I needed him, I taught myself....just needed his hand waived over my grade card to get the class checked off required class list for my degree.
Bad thing about a good education.....you end up knowing too much. We buy too many toys and end up as slaves to our debt (why give your retirement to someone else?......look at your billing, how much do you waste? TWITTER....PUKE.....sorry)
PS....My wife is a school teacher....no pension....private school. She can tell you a lot about waste in public schools.
Looks like we found AM"s concert tour for the summer.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/feb/06/the-plays-the-thing-for-s...
FWIW, saw this peformed by several actors including Laura Linney at the COSC last year. Sparked quite an interesting spirited conversation afterwards. The senior officer wives weren't on the same page as the spouses a little farther down the pecking order when it came to deciding what it all meant.
Dems - cheer up. Your oppo is self destructing barely out the gate...
I am no longer going to haunt gay terrorist infiltrators. I am after bigger, shaggier game...
(Fnord - suffer thru it, about 2.45 in)
Demon Sheep
Heard it on TWITTER....Dianne Feinstein said that she would back a Universal Health Care plan that kept up with medical inflation! (actually it was on national news a couple months ago......)
HUH.....MEDICAL INFLATION !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT IS ABOUT 10% per year !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No wonder California is in deep doo doo.
The issue is that Congress has to manually adjust the Doctor pay out for Medicare.......Just did it this year AGAIN.
Elf.......I hope both the DEMOCRATS and REPUBLICANS wake up.........Either that or let the system crash and we can pick up the pieces at home. We can eat the devil sheep....After the money in Washington blows away, they will not be able to screw with us anymore.
Think TWITTER is giving me the JITTERS.
They may well bankrupt us, as it's in their self interest to keep spending our money until even our credit and the worth of the money itself are gone. It's not malice, just their self interest. Of course everyone of them has a "good" reason, such as studying the intricacies of Afghan well digging politics.
This is something that I found to be interesting...(I know politics is bad for a COIN Blog, but connects to TWITTER).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/02/04/ST20100204...
Seems like the more we create tools to communicate, the less we listen. Twitter, Facebook, Bloggs, Cell Phones, Internet, Texting, list goes on.
Wealth has enabled our ability to communicate more efficiently. Need enables listening.
We are a spoiled people. Sometimes I wish the Wall Street banks had failed. When your standing in a soup line, you have time to listen to people. Twitter just is not an issue anymore. DADT does not seem to rank high on the list. When someone is breaking down you door to get what you have, the gun control debate becomes very short. Health care costs are meaning less, no one can afford it. Budget issues have no dimension.
Been through a catagory four hurricane and like during any disaster, when the state goes away......for a very short time you become a citizen again.......until FEMA shows up.
Ex,
Good to see you back up on the site. I'm in Haiti (which is better than DC, I think) so I missed some of your previous stuff and am just catching up - hard to get to the blogs down here and I don't think Twitter is happening either.
One thing caught my eye - your mention of excellent books that arrive on your desk. You ever thought about putting out a reading list of recent material that you'd recommend?
I'll check back later, or you can get my e mail from Bob Wilson at the building. Thanks.
Dave
"during any disaster, when the state goes away......for a very short time you become a citizen again.......until FEMA shows up."
Zak, that's a classic.
Excuse me - Twitter?
140 characters is better at developing your writing and long-think skills than a blog?
I must be missing something.
Fuck, I have to sign up for twitter now? Only you could bring me this low, Exum.
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