Month: January 2009

Clausewitz, On War, Book 2: War is an Act of Human Intercourse

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I’d like to follow up on Younghusband’s excellent post “Clausewitz, On War, Book 2: Clausewitz as social theorist”

Social factors can play a pivotal role in an engagement. During the Kamakura period the Japanese style of one on one combat with longswords was forever changed after facing a Mongol cavalry charge and a wall of Chinese spearmen. Furthermore, social factors abound in the first Book of On War where Clausewitz lists the general variables of war (see my equation for examples). Part of Clausewitz’s military “genius” could be “social intelligence”. This type of intelligence plays an important role in understanding personal relations, navigating and influencing politics, and affects interpretive skills such as those needed in intelligence analysis. As in the Mongolian example above, social rules periodically clash with changing times or new enemies. A military “socialite” would have the attuned social intelligence to not only detect these changes but to be able to react to them.
 
Clausewitz was correct to identify the social dimension as a weak point of the materialists. His only fault was being 250 years ahead of his time, before social constructivism had an established framework to deal with the problem.

A nice piece of analysis by Younghusband. I was stirred to ponder along a related tangent by Clausewitz’s passage ” War is an Act of Human Intercourse”:

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Would Giving a Number Have Killed You?

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[via Wired via Instapundit]

This asinine bill seeks to mandate that digital cameras in phones make a sound when activated to keep people from making surreptitious photos. Beyond the incredible inanity (what if you need to quickly photograph a crime in progress?) and nannying of the bill, it highlights just how lazy and divorced from the productive world the political class has become. 

Specifically the bill says:

Requirement- Beginning 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, any mobile phone containing a digital camera that is manufactured for sale in the United States shall sound a tone or other sound audible within a reasonable radius of the phone whenever a photograph is taken with the camera in such phone. [emp added]

Okay, imagine that you’re an engineer tasked with implementing the sound function in the phone. By what criteria do you determine what comprises a “reasonable radius”? Engineers work in numbers. An engineer has to engineer the phone to emit a sound of  X decibels in order to be heard by Y percent of the general population at a radius of Z with U decibels of ambient noise.  What values of X,Y,Z and U are legally “reasonable”? 

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Obama Walks Into a Window

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D’oh.

So what, right? Simple mistake to make. Laugh it off.

I am old enough to remember Gerald Ford.

Gerald Ford was probably the best athlete we ever had in the White House.

He tripped and fell down some stairs.

The news media and the comedians made that stumble his identity by constant mockery.

Why? Because Ford was a Republican. Period. No other reason. Just that.

“Ford? The one who was a klutz, right?”

And that is all that anyone remembers about Ford: A lie.

Obama, the Messiah, will get no such treatment.

There are two sets of rules.

The Mainstream Media = The propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. Period.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Never forget it.

California Confiscates Tax Refunds

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I would wager that those who withheld more than they owed on their State of California taxes didn’t think that they would be making a zero interest loan to the state.  I would be absolutely furious.  I am thinking that many will never see their refund, as California appears to be on the precipice. 

California has had no money in its general fund for the past 17 months, and has been paying its bills by borrowing from Wall Street and special internal funds.

If the state’s legislators and governor do not reach a budget agreement that brings immediate funds into the state’s coffers, the state’s borrowed funds will be entirely exhausted at the end of February, according to the controller’s office.

I would also wager that workers will be making a lot of changes to their withholding so as not to be owed any refund at the end of next year.  Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice…

Then again, the feds could come to the rescue and print some money for Cali.  Good luck with your bond rating, California municipalities and (insert project here) districts.

Some muni bonds are actually paying very good rates right now.  As I was sitting across the table from a financial advisor we discussed the rates that some municipalities and state agencies in California were paying and then we both laughed out loud and moved on to looking at munis from more stable cities and states.  I am thinking that this conversation has been played out millions of times at brokerage desks across the nation.

Clausewitz, On War, Book 2: Clausewitz as social theorist

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In Book 2 of On War Clausewitz attempts to clarify the reasons why formal theories of war are no help to a commander-in-chief. He criticizes contemporary theorists as being too mechanical, too reliant on material factors. Clausewitz reminds us that war takes place in a social space, with social conventions that are fluid and cannot be pinned down by static “rules of war”. However, he fails any attempt at social analysis. Rather, he spends his time trying to differentiate between “knowledge”, “intellect” and “judgement”. This muddles what is otherwise a brilliant observation: “War is an act of human intercourse” (pp. 149).

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