Blogging

NEW BOOK: The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science, Strategy and War

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Re-posted from Zenpundit.com at the request of my co-author Lexington Green:

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The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science, Strategy, and War

This post has been a long time coming.

A while back, we had a a symposium at Chicago Boyz to discuss and debate the superb book Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd by Colonel Frans Osinga. It was a great discussion from which I learned far more about the ideas of the iconoclastic military theorist John Boyd than I had ever previously considered. Not everyone involved was an admirer of John Boyd, a few were initially skeptical and we had one certified critic ( though I had tried to recruit several more). Overall, it was the kind of exchange that makes the blogosphere special as a medium when it is at it’s intellectual best.

Shortly thereafter, via Dan of tdaxp I was approached by the publisher of Nimble Books, W.F. Zimmerman, who happened to be a military history buff and who was interested in working our loose online discussion of Dr. Osinga’s prodigious tome into a book. Initially, I was somewhat dubious but I warmed to the project at the urging of tdaxp and Lexington Green, and agreed to serve as the Editor and “herder of cats” in a project that would involve a large number of contributors with very different backgrounds and some fairly dense and esoteric material on strategic theory to digest and make comprehensible to a general reader.

A wonderful experience.

We had an excellent roster of contributors for The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science, Strategy, and War – Dr. Chet Richards, Daniel Abbott, Shane Deichman, Frank Hoffman, Adam Elkus, Lexington Green, Thomas Wade and Dr. Frans Osinga, who contributed several essays. Dr. Thomas Barnett sets the intellectual tone in the foreword after which the authors brought a wide range of professional perspectives to bear – cognitive psychology, military history, physics, strategy, journalism and, of course, blogging – in a series of articles that tried to explain the essence and dimensions of John Boyd’s contribution to strategic thought. Hopefully, we succeeded in creating an interesting and useful primer but the readers will be the ultimate judges, free to dispute our conclusions and offer contending arguments of their own.

I’d like to think that Colonel Boyd would have wanted it that way.

“Let the media do the dirty work.”

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Mark Brown, a liberal columnist in the Sun Times, had this to say about Gov. Palin.

Leave her alone. Let it go. Don’t even think about going there. It’s a setup. It’s a trap.
 
I wanted to shout that advice to the Barack Obama campaign Friday, but somebody on the television was telling me it was already too late: Obama’s people had reacted initially to the news of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s candidacy for vice president by belittling her credentials.
 
For Pete’s sake, there’s no reason to do that. Let it happen on its own. Let the media do the dirty work.

Once in a while the mask slips and people blurt out the truth. Here we see Mr. Brown admitting what every rational person knows already. The news media is Obama’s ally, it is partisan, it is in effect an arm of the Democratic Party, engaged in this election on behalf of Sen. Obama. This goes far beyond “liberal bias”, which is also obvious to anyone paying attention. The mainstream media are Obama’s protectors and cheering section. The press area at the Denver convention was full of people with press passes, cheering and chanting along. They are on the team.

The news media is not interested in reporting news about Gov. Palin, or being fair or objective. It is interested in “…belittling her credentials”, it is interested in doing “the dirty work” on behalf of Sen. Obama, to help him win. Brown, who ought to know, since he works at the Sun Times, is telling us that his industry will run interference all the way for Sen. Obama, until he is in the White House, allowing him and his campaign to take the high road.

Thank God these people no longer have a monopoly on news.

Thank God they are part of a dying industry which will not be missed.

BTW, lets all start referring to Sarah Palin as governor. She is the only executive out of the four people at the top of the two tickets. Gov. Palin deserves to be referred to by her office.

UPDATE: Jim Bennett sent this great photo of Gov. Palin with a caribou which is headed for the stew pot. Here’s hoping Sen. Biden is in similar shape, metaphorically of course, after their debate.

UPDATE 2: Lisa Schiffren has an excellent piece about Gov. Palin, and why she has excited the GOP base. It had a nice, big impact on McCain fundraising, which is an objective demonstration of new support. The news media has been mostly wrong about the rationale for this pick. It is much more about mobilizing the party base, and getting the many, many unhappy, reluctant GOP voters excited and willing to work, contribute and vote. The idea that lots of Hillary voters would come over is not plausible. Democrats are good soldiers and will vote for their party on election day. It is much more about taking away the “look-at-the-two-boring-white-guys” theme than about, “I-am-woman-hear-me-roar.” Gov. Palin’s femaleness, in other words, checks one of Sen. Obama’s offensive plays, while her substantive positions mobilize the base.

‘Post Mortem’

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There’s at least one blog for everything, and it turns out that the Washinton Post actually has an obituary blog, called ‘Post Mortem‘.

Some interesting ones:

Is God Dead?:

In 1966, Time magazine ran a provocative cover with the bold question, “Is God Dead?” The story led to sharp backlash from social conservatives and sparked a public debate about philosophy and religion. The editor responsible for that story, Otto Fuerbringer, has died at 97, and his obituary is in today’s (Friday’s) Post.

Read more

Quote of the Day

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In most online conversations I’ve been involved with, you eventually come to a point where the people interested in an evolving, exploratory dialogue, in learning something new about themselves and others, in thinking aloud, in working through things, find themselves worn out by a kind of rhetorical infection inflicted by bad faith participants who are just there to affirm what they already know and attack everything that doesn’t conform to that knowledge. (Or by the classic “energy creatures” whose only objective is to satisfy their narcissism.) I used to think that was a function of the size of the room, that in a bigger discursive space, richer possibilities would present themselves. Now I don’t know…

–Timothy Burke

(via Megan McArdle)

“Psychopathology of Anonymous EFL China Teacher Forums”

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A surprisingly interesting blog post:

The Psychology of Cyberspace
 
Dr. John Suler, a clinical psychologist, computer enthusiast and professor at Rider University in New Jersey has written prolifically about the psychology of cyberspace. In his book of the same name, he offers some very thought-provoking questions for us to consider1:
 

Does online anonymity and freedom of access encourage antisocial personalities?
 
Do narcissistic people use the access to numerous relationships as a means to gain an admiring audience?
 
Do people with dissociative personalities tend to isolate their cyberspace life from their face-to-face lives? Do they tend to engage in the creation of multiple and distinct online identities?
 
Are schizoid people attracted to the reduced intimacy resulting from online anonymity? Are they lurkers?
 
Do manic people take advantage of asynchronous communication as a means to send measured responses to others, or do they naturally prefer the terse, immediate, and spontaneous conversations of chat and IM?
 
Are compulsives generally drawn to computers & cyberspace for the control it gives them over their relationships and environment?
 
Do histrionic people enjoy the opportunities for theatrical displays that are possible in online groups, especially in environments that provide software tools for creative self-expression?

 
After five years of being a member of, as well as managing, a couple of EFL forums for foreign teachers in China, I’d say the answer to all these questions is a resounding yes. The problem, as I see it, is a multifaceted one.
 
As discussed in the aforementioned article, foreign teachers in China can accurately be thought of as an oppressed group who engage in negative behaviors towards each other that are collectively referred to as “horizontal violence.”2 These behaviors include but are not limited to devaluing, discouraging, scapegoating, backstabbing, sabotaging, cheating, exploiting, and conspiring. To varying degrees, depending on the particular individuals involved, these behaviors are tempered or constrained through face-to-face contacts and the eventual establishment of personal acquaintanceships. However, the anonymity that the Internet provides induces what researchers refer to as the “online disinhibition effect.”3 That is, in the absence of face-to-face contact and under the veil of anonymity, these aggressive behaviors become uninhibited and are unleashed—and clear evidence of this can be found not only among these forums’ registered members but among their moderators and administrators as well. To the degree that the “fellow patients” are running the “asylum,” so to speak, these forums can be (and typically are) very toxic environments, psychologically speaking.

Read the whole thing.