Blogging

A Stop On a Journey – The Lesson To Be Learned

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(A reprise post from the early days of the original mil-blog, Sgt. Stryker’s Daily Brief, which was posted so long ago that the only place I had it preserved was in a collection of posts about matters historical.)

In the month of September, 1985, my daughter and I spent a couple of weeks in Italy, before I took the Autostrada north, over the Brenner Pass. I had decided to drive across Europe, when I got orders transferring me from Greece, to Spain. The Air Force generously provided passage on the car ferry from Patras to Brindisi, and Blondie and I were off on a six-week long ramble.

In the space of a day, we went from flat northern Italian landscapes of cypress trees and square campanile towers to green terraced fields clinging to a steep mountainside, and chalets and the onion-domed church towers of Bavaria. Just north of the Austrian border, I got tired of driving. In a little town just off the highway somewhat short of Munich (now, since we were in Germany, it was an autobahn) I spotted a sign for a “Zimmer frei”, and for a night rented a guest bedroom from a nice elderly German woman whose guest bathroom provided hot water only in the sink tap. Complaint in rusty college German only roused mutual incomprehension. The bedroom seemed to be that of her long-grown and departed children, with twin beds and a wardrobe upon which someone had painted a view of the nearby village, as seen from the bedroom windows.

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ChicagoBoyz Miami Meetup – Tentative Agenda

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Selected from various alternatives provided by, and after discussion with, Jonathan. I mention South Beach as a starting point because I expect to lodge in that area. I do not, however, plan to rent a car, so I will be either ridesharing or riding along with fellow attendees and contributing for fuel expenses.

Your next step, if interested, is to indicate in comments that you expect to attend, and provide an e-mail address in, shall we say, non-scrapable format, like “jane/john dot doe at provider dot com.”

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ChicagoBoyz Miami Meetup, Weekend of 22 April

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Many details TBD, but prospective attendees are advised to mark your calendars and begin making arrangements. I expect to fly in/out of MIA and stay somewhere in South Beach, possibly Thu/Fri/Sat nights. Expect most activities to occur on Friday the 21st and Saturday the 22nd.

KC Meetup After-Action Review

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I have thanked the attendees privately via e-mail but wanted to post some thoughts here. Leading off with a plus/delta exercise, because this situation needs a quality tool …

+

Δ
  • highly enthusiastic and convivial attendees
  • excellent weather
  • fun events
    • Friday night in the Crossroads
    • Saturday morning brunch, also in the Crossroads
    • WWI museum
    • legendary KC BBQ, dined al fresco due to good weather
    • Sunday morning brunch at Union Station
    • Truman Library
  • good discussion during “symposium”
  • my circadian rhythm, as affected by my work schedule
  • at least three attendees had to cancel only a day or two before the meetup weekend
  • communication gaps may have prevented at least two more from attending
  • low number of formal presentations during “symposium”
  • no video of “symposium”
  • parking challenges
  • one relatively expensive meal

Lessons-learned database entries:

  1. Reaching back a bit to the Denver meetup in late April, a twice-a-year, spring/fall rhythm seems like a good idea.
  2. The overall structure of a Friday night kickoff get-together, then ~4 activities on Saturday (including 2 meals), then a brunch and one more optional activity on Sunday, seems about right.
  3. There is pretty much no such thing as too much communication.
  4. Lead time should be at least a couple of months, and 3 4 months is better.
  5. The expectation of structured presentations/discussion should be clearly set, and prospective attendees should be encouraged to have something to deliver in the 20 40 minute range.

I am uncertain about future locations. I want to think that central US, generally longitudes 85 ° 105 ° W, is preferable. We’ve done Denver and KC; the next two obvious possibilities are Chicago and D/FW.

Admittedly, if I could get away with it, I’d just keep having them in KC. It’s very centrally located and (mostly) cheap, and I’m confident I can get us free/extremely cheap conference-room space even if attendance grows well into double digits.

Anyway, feedback/suggestions welcome.

 

Newspeak

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In addition to the other corruptions of our major national establishment and institutions, I think that I am most annoyed by the corruption of language. Certain euphemistic terms have come to be kind of newspeak in the Orwellian sense. In themselves such expressions are bland, anodyne and seemingly harmless, but what they mean in reality is horrific. Reproductive health care; that sounds so much better than ‘abortion’. Gender-affirming health care instead of ‘amputating breasts and male genitalia, surgically removing vaginas and massively administering puberty-altering drugs’. ‘Diversity, equity and inclusion’; there’s another harmless-sounding term, which actually means conformity, hamstringing the talented, and exclusion of the designated disfavored categories of people. ‘Disinformation’ is a much more elegant term for information that may discomfit the progressive ruling class or counter the established narrative, and ‘systemic racism’ means that minority criminal offenders are automatically excused, no matter how violent or vicious the crime they are charged with.
So, what other examples of corruption of the language can you suggest? What other newspeak terms have, as the expression has it, gotten your goat in a big way. Add in the comments.