Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Carl from Chicago Last night I went to see one of my favorite bands, Electric Six, at Dante’s in Portland on Burnside Avenue. They played a fun show and the band sounded great (my ears are still ringing). Here is their iconic singer “Dick Valentine” on stage. The band delivers hilarious onstage banter and are highly recommended. The crowd at Dante’s was also great and everyone seemed to be in good spirits.
Blitzed is a book by Norman Ohler about drugs and Germany during WW2. The book also appears to comprehensively demonstrate how these drugs impacted military tactics and operations for the German troops and also how they altered strategy at the highest levels.
From a tactical and operational perspective, I can see how the narrative of the use of drugs to push troops to move faster and work at night aligns with my understanding of the early years of WW2. The Germans did cover ground rapidly during the early years of the Blitzkrieg and absolutely outfought the Allies (overall) at night. They also managed more sorties for their air force per plane and were more effective at leveraging their military assets (also through battlefield recovery at night of damaged equipment). Compared to WW1, especially, the distances that the German troops covered during the Blitzkrieg phases of 1939-41 were amazing and their combat power remained strong.
From a strategic perspective, the book attempts to align the delusional attack known as “the Battle of the Bulge” in late 1944 to the use of drugs by the supreme commander, which would account for his thoughts that this shock attack could break the will of the Allies to fight. This is an interesting line of thought and if we had perfect information we would attempt to match the various drugs he was prescribed on top of the decisions that were made during different battles and campaigns during WW2.
I have seen a number of reviews of this book and most of them seem to think that there is a strong basis of fact. However, there are often bitterly contested reviews, especially with regards to the more sweeping generalizations that were translated as “everyone was on drugs”. Those discussions, to me, are more of a “corner case” of the key findings related to 1) the impact of drugs on the combat power of early war German formations 2) the impact of drugs on decision making at the highest levels of command. I would love to hear from other authors interested in this topic to see how it aligns with their opinions.
Cross posted at LITGM
Portland, Oregon hosts “fleet week” where navy ships (including from Canada) dock alongside the river right next to downtown and offer tours and set up booths and the like. This year I was excited because USS Jackson, an Independence Class Littoral combat ship was arriving and I would get to see what an advanced combat craft looks like up close. I also found out a key link to “disruption” which has been a theme of my recent analysis and posts.
The first thing you notice is the unique hull (compared to traditional warship designs). This design is supposed to let it operate in shallow waters near coastlines and also deliver very high speed – up to 50 knots – although the top speed is classified. The navy had a chain link fence up and armed guards with M16 weapons and a sign saying “use of deadly force authorized” so they were not kidding around.
That same day I received my copy of “Modern War”, a magazine published by Strategy and Tactics Press (and I highly recommend that you subscribe to their publications, they are a solid and interesting publishing house) which just happened to profile the Independence Class ships on p68-70 of their July – August issue. Some highlights:
They are controversial because of their limited basic armament and expensive construction costs. Senior naval leaders argue the mission flexibility and extensive automation provide a vast array of capabilities with fewer personnel and platforms than traditional designs. Construction and operating costs dominate budget discussions and headlines because they come ‘up front’. Today, however, personnel costs constitute 62% of the annual Department of Defense Budget.
When I was in high school Yngwie Malmsteen hit the metal scene like a hurricane. That was back in the day when you would have long and furious arguments about who was the “best” guitarist (remember, we didn’t have the internet and had to fill our time with something other than social media). When Yngwie emerged the term “shredding” became the norm and Yngwie was the apex of that style of guitar playing – almost the photo that you would put adjacent to that term in the dictionary.
His debut album “Rising Force” was a classic in that genre – mostly instrumental and filled with probably just about the recommended dose of Yngwie for most non die-hard fans. The hand raising his iconic guitar above the fire is the image of Yngwie that jumps into my mind first and foremost.
When I worked in the power industry everyone understood that the cost of a power outage was high, but it was impossible to put a precise value on it. There is the reputational damage, the specific costs of payouts to businesses and residences that are impacted (depending on your jurisdiction), the cost of restoring service (typically it is “all hands” in terms of available personnel and equipment), and finally the loss of trust by your all-important regulator when you come back later and ask for an inevitable price increase for your customers.
The other, more subtle, cost of outages is the fact that businesses and residents must plan for unreliable power sources, and invest in backup generation which includes fuel, testing, etc… I would call this “planning for failure”. Over time, this also causes businesses to consider exiting the grid entirely in one form or another when they are large and capable enough, causing the remaining fixed costs to be borne by the remaining customers.
Here in Portland right now we are dealing with a major outage, as a fire caused a power outage to over 2000 customers downtown near the Pearl district. This isn’t 2000 customers… most of these meters are large businesses and buildings and not individual houses. In practical terms, the downtown Target is probably closed, Powell’s bookstore (a major tourist attraction) is closed, and many, many other smaller businesses and restaurants. It would be similar to a power outage taking out most of River North in Chicago where I used to live.
Luckily I live in a building with a backup generator, and they have fuel for 3 days, so we likely will be unaffected. That’s what you get when you pay more for a recently built class A apartment rather than an older vintage walkup. But many, many folks are going to be impacted by this (it was over 90 degrees yesterday) and many restaurants are going to have to throw out their food on top of losing a couple of days’ worth of customers.
As we re-think electricity and the grid entirely it is important to consider reliability in the equation. I believe that many individuals and businesses just take power for granted until it isn’t there anymore. This challenge will likely be exacerbated by renewables and solar power… in this outage it is a distribution system failure, but intermittent generation of power is another variable in the reliability equation.
Cross posted at LITGM