Studying war and learning?

Commander Salamander wrote about US fixations about how to fight wars; how the idea that "Both graduated pressure and rapid decisive operations promised efficiency in war" had tangled and crippled us both in Vietnam and in the later wars we're fought in. "The conviction that technology offered a panacea not only impeded U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq to begin with but also slowed the ability to adapt once the true nature of those wars became apparent."

I've been somewhat immersed in WWII Pacific history recently, and see parallels with the Japanese decisive naval battle doctrine with which they hoped to beat the USA. One great victory cripples your enemy's fleet and leaves control of the seas to you. That Mahan's theory didn't quite apply in this case (the US could keep building ships even if the Japanese controlled the Pacific), and that technology changes rendered the doctrine much less relevant, didn't seem to ever sink in.

We field amazingly sophisticated technologies--but the weapon count is low. The Houthis have been exercising our ship defenses, forcing us to chew through expensive systems faster than we can replenish, using cheap stuff.

I wonder: What lessons have our war colleges learned from the Houthis, Afghanis, Ukranians and Russians? And what will those lessons translate into? Are procurements driven by projected needs or by politics and "ooh, shiney"?

I'm not looking forward to cartels (and then others) starting to use cheap drones to attack law enforcement and judges in this country. I suspect it won't be too long. Do we have countermeasures planned?

Specificity

I got to thinking about confessions this morning, recalling a little earlier mention of such things, when I ran across a post on Anecdotal Evidence about "kitch":

"This insulation of kitsch from experience," Kimball writes, "helps to explain its peculiar abstract quality: Kitsch is always ready to sacrifice the particular for the general, the specific for the universal, the concrete for the abstract."

...

"Instead of attempting to communicate individual beautiful, true, evil, human phenomena, kitsch strives to incarnate beauty, truth, evil, and humanity without loss. Art is more modest. It sees the universal in the particular, true, but it does not thereby dispense with the particular; its gaze remains focused on the particular because it realizes and accepts that, for man, the world speaks not abstractly or all at once but piecemeal, in fragments, through this tree, this landscape, this face, this web of relationships in which I find myself."

It's way easier to confess to the generic sin than the particular. The memory of a particular instance of (e.g.) rudeness still has the power to humiliate me in a way that no general admission that "I was rude to some people" can.

We don't live among Forms, but specific instances. Love is generic, yes, but it exists--is incarnated--in a particular smile, in setting out the needed item before the loved one needs it, the unseen works as well as the surprise cakes.

Likewise with the sins. Generic "Sin" afflicts us all, particular forms beset us differently, but what curses us most are the instances of it we put in our lives. Instances we don't like to think about; abstractions are easier.

Instances are life; abstractions are disembodied. Maybe angels have some kind of life of archetypes; not us.

Church Music

AVI relinked his Church Music post(*), the one that generated so much discussion. apparently not directly. Oh well, read it anyhow I had a few views; this is where they came from.

Years ago we joined a large church in the area. It had good preaching, teaching, opportunities to serve -- but the music hurt.

No, I don't mean it offended my aesthetic senses, though it wasn't my favorite style; I mean that the first song was set at roach-killer volume (to remind people to stop talking?), and it only improved slightly from there. It was just too loud. I not only couldn't hear myself (the way musicians who use monitors can hear themselves), it hurt my ears if I sat in the wrong row.

I started to get quietly grumpy about that.

One day I got sat down and inaudibly interrogated about that:

You've got a bad attitude here.

Yes.

You don't like the music. You're starting to spread that dislike out.

I guess so.

I don't guess. Are the band players your enemies?

Well, not exactly. But.

What did I tell you to do with your enemies?

Oh. Love them.

And here that means?

Serve them.

I volunteered to do the monitor board. I dressed in inconspicuous dark clothes and went behind the curtain to run the giant thing during rehearsals and services, and whatever mix they wanted, I tweaked for them. I changed batteries, adjusted the lectern...

After a few years they started up a new service, with more traditional music, and needed people to run that--which is where I am now.

Several years of serving the teams trying to praise God with loud music didn't give me a great love for the style, though I understand it better now. What it did give me was a love for them.

All kinds of plastics

I'd been intermittently looking at microplastics in the body and some of their sources.

Recent events led me to look up do microplastics come from dissolving sutures?

Yes, they can; though the plastic is different: polyglycolic acid. Apparently you can get tiny shards as it decomposes, and they worry about cells ingesting them, but that's not what the bulk of the paper above is about.

Microplastics seems a wider topic than I thought.

On a related note, I wonder about the safety of biodegradeable plastics in general. Something that is "starch-based" is partly plastics and partly starch, and it is designed to "break down", i.e., be at least partly digested. But is this a little like soap? Does the digestible part bring the indigestible along with it into the organism? "Here's a little starch to sweeten the taste of the propylene fragment."

RFK Jr

We wonders.

Are the proposed bans on dyes based on solid risk analysis that was just held up for some reason? If so, what caused the delay?

Or are they subject to discretion--in which case, why does one man have that kind of discretion? It seems a bit arbitrary.

Africa is a big place

and stories that lump it all together don't give a very enlightening picture of what diets are like in any one place. You're not likely to get local Fufu (from cassava) and Fura (fermented millet) in the same place.

This article is about fermenting for preservation, not alcohol. Preservation matters: "The climate makes the preservation of fresh farm products such as milk, fruits, and vegetables very challenging, resulting in reports of over 70% loss of some products yearly"

That 70% sounds a bit high.

Francis

I'm an outsider in many ways here: not Catholic, not involved in Catholic disputations in the USA, and absolutely not involved in disputations within the Vatican. Quite a few things may have had a very different appearance when viewed from there. For example, I did not understand the why's that went into restricting the Tridentine Mass. I'm told there were worries about divisions, perhaps more visible in Rome than to me.

What the standard media reports about religion is generally ignorant down to the bone, and I gather that I cannot simply just trust Catholic social media either. I regarded some reported pronouncements askance (ignoring the political ones), but figured there was something I wasn't getting--sometimes the truth of what was actually said. I wished Francis well when he started, and wish him well as he goes before us--may the Lord have mercy on him and on us all. I gather he did a lot of good work, and that doesn't usually make news.

I am thankful that, despite the unhappy truth of Maxim 483 below, I don't recall ever joking about him being Catholic.

Maxims revisited

Going on from a maxim, I decided to have a look at the most famous: Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims by François duc de La Rochefoucauld

Most of the corpus is clever, though not always edifying or wise. A little acquaintance with The Four Loves clears out some confusion he suffers from. It took me quite a while to read through the work, not because I was slow, but because I found the cynicism (especially about love) a bit hard to take. ("63.—The aversion to lying is often a hidden ambition to render our words credible and weighty, and to attach a religious aspect to our conversation." Um. No.)

A few caught my eye.

• 8.—The passions are the only advocates which always persuade. They are a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.
• 36.—It would seem that nature, which has so wisely ordered the organs of our body for our happiness, has also given us pride to spare us the mortification of knowing our imperfections.
• 127.—The true way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.
• 150.—The desire which urges us to deserve praise strengthens our good qualities, and praise given to wit, valour, and beauty, tends to increase them.
• 152.—If we never flattered ourselves the flattery of others would not hurt us.
• 159.—It is not enough to have great qualities, we should also have the management of them.
• 300.—There are follies as catching as infections.
• 313.—How is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?
• 318.—We may find means to cure a fool of his folly, but there are none to set straight a cross-grained spirit.
• 327.—We own to small faults to persuade others that we have not great ones.
• 372.—Most young people think they are natural when they are only boorish and rude.
• 423.—Few know how to be old.
• 432.—To praise good actions heartily is in some measure to take part in them.
• 437.—We should not judge of a man's merit by his great abilities, but by the use he makes of them.
• 439.—We should earnestly desire but few things if we clearly knew what we desired.
• 442.—We try to make a virtue of vices we are loth to correct.
• 462.—The same pride which makes us blame faults from which we believe ourselves free causes us to despise the good qualities we have not.
• 477.—The same firmness that enables us to resist love enables us to make our resistance durable and lasting. So weak persons who are always excited by passions are seldom really possessed of any.
• 481.—Nothing is rarer than true good nature, those who think they have it are generally only pliant or weak.
• 483.—Usually we are more satirical from vanity than malice.
• XXIV.—The most subtle folly grows out of the most subtle wisdom.
• LXXVI.—Many persons wish to be devout; but no one wishes to be humble.
• LXXXII.—It is more easy to extinguish the first desire than to satisfy those which follow.

Some of these are really good: "To praise good actions heartily is in some measure to take part in them." That may sound a hair familiar: "he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward."

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Computer organization

I wonder if I should run longer power/HDMI cables up the bookcase, and try suspending the monitor from the ceiling--adjustable with a chain loop. Less desk clutter, better monitor height, and I could get it out of the way when I wanted to just look out the window or read.

Work

AVI has a useful post up on work. What's it good for?

There's a little paradox in life. Most of our greatest joys come from using our gifts to serve people we care about. And nobody likes being treated as a servant.

As a Christian, I suspect that the first part of that--the joys--come from being made in the image of God who is love. The second part I think we understand: we want to see love too.

I look a mess

and the incisions will need TLC, but the big tumor is gone, and I'm home. So I will rest "according to the Sabbath."

The weather usually doesn't cooperate

but the aurora page is nice to monitor -- just in case. The other day it reported a storm. A Kp of 7 meant it would be visible down into Illinois. There are a couple of places outside of town that have decent viewing possibilities.

Of course this was at 2 in the afternoon, so I decided not to drop everything and drive.

If you have clear nights, have a look at the page -- maybe there'll be a show. The first time I saw the aurora I was flying across the Atlantic, and the show was great, but distant. The second time they seemed to be almost straight up above us (about 43 degrees north). I haven't gotten bored yet.

Google AI answers

I don't like it. Its results seem plausible, but I caught it halucinating tonight. I was looking up "farebox recovery" for the Geneva public transportation system. The first query said (correctly), that there wasn't any information about this online. (There wasn't the last time I checked either, several years ago--the city budget info wasn't online.) The second time it claimed a record high farebox recovery of 185%. I tracked that number down to a PDF comparing different cities--that number (the world's highest) was Hong Kong's, though Geneva was listed among the cities.

A third time it claimed 10%, but I don't know where it got that number.

Beware of Artificial Imagination.

Lent-ish

This has been an interesting Lent. I gather (it wasn't part of my family's tradition) that Lent should be marked by fasting/abstaining on the one hand and good works on the other--though most depictions emphasize the fasting and using the times of "I miss that" as reminders to pray.

My Lent has been marked more with headache/neckache/earache/eyeache and impatience for Good Friday when the big tumor comes out. I find aches and pains distracting; not reminders of anything except ouch. At least they say the prognosis is good.

I wrote this "Lenten reflection" when the thing was about a third its present size.

        Do your own thing?

Forty grams of lawless death
  here masquerades as life.
Love and life know form and rule,
  But selfish strangling lumps
Formlessly invade the rest
  To doom themselves or more.
We, members of each other,
  Sate lawless lusts and lie,
Rogue cells disdaining order,
  Metastasized with pride.

Long for the new bodies
Long for the new Body

Wrong kind of bird

Roberts Field has had power outages, and sometimes planes have had to divert.

The Liberia Airport Authority (LAA) has informed the Senate Transport Committee that a group of birds, feeding from nearby dumpsites, has been causing significant disruptions to the airport’s power supply.

Initially, the LAA had attributed the disruption to an electrical issue stemming from the Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC) power grid.

However, in a subsequent update, LAA officials revealed that the birds have been perching on the airport’s transformers, leading to frequent electricity problems. This unusual interference has resulted in intermittent power outages, significantly impacting operations at the airport.

Image taken from Knews Online.

Hiding from troubles

I think this story was in American Negro Folk Tales; I paraphrase somewhat.

There was a man who had a bad time with his wife, and got angry with all women. He had a little boy, so he took the boy way back in the hills with him and raised him there, where the boy never saw a woman or girl at all. When the boy was about 13, his father reckoned he couldn't keep him in the hills forever--he'd have to go to town sometime--so he brought the boy with him to town this time.

He explained the things the boy had never seen before--a cart, a store, and so on. Some girls came by.

"What are those, Daddy?"

"Those are ducks, son."

"I want one, Daddy."

His father sighed. "Which one, son?"

"I don't care, any one."

The tale ended with a "moral" that the father had planned poorly, so his son didn't know how to be appropriately picky when the time came.

I'm not a student of folklore like my Mother's aunt, but that didn't sound like any of the other tales I'd read before, or since. (I didn't see the motif in Thompson's list.)

For irrelevant reasons I was reading Barlaam and Ioasaph supposedly by St. John of Damascus (died 749AD): a fantasy based somewhat on the mythic(*) history of Gautama. Honestly, I skimmed a lot of it. It included this story, told by Theudas as part of his advice to Ioasaph's father.

"A certain king was grieved and exceeding sad at heart, because that he had no male issue, deeming this no small misfortune. While he was in this condition, there was born to him a son, and the king's soul was filled with joy thereat. Then they that were learned amongst his physicians told him that, if for the first twelve years the boy saw the sun or fire, he should entirely lose his sight, for this was proved by the condition of his eyes. Hearing this, the king, they say, caused a little house, full of dark chambers, to be hewn out of the rock, and therein enclosed his child together with the men that nursed him, and, until the twelve years were past, never suffered him to see the least ray of light. After the fulfilment of the twelve years, the king brought forth from his little house his son that had never seen a single object, and ordered his waiting men to show the boy everything after his kind; men in one place, women in another; elsewhere gold and silver; in another place, pearls and precious stones, fine and ornamental vestments, splendid chariots with horses from the royal stables, with golden bridles and purple caparisons, mounted by armed soldiers; also droves of oxen and flocks of sheep. In brief, row after row, they showed the boy everything. Now, as he asked what each ox these was called, the king's esquires and guards made known unto him each by name: but, when he desired to learn what women were called, the king's spearman, they say, wittily replied that they were called, "Devils that deceive men." But the boy's heart was smitten with the love of these above all the rest. So, when they had gone round everywhere and brought him again unto the king, the king asked, which of all these sights had pleased him most. "What," answered the boy, "but the Devils that deceive men? Nothing that I have seen to-day hath fired my heart with such love as these." The king was astonished at the saying of the boy, to think how masterful a thing the love of women is. Therefore think not to subdue thy son in any other way than this."

I wonder if there's a connection.

The story of Ioasaph is freighted with emphasis on the monastic and austere life--explained that baptistm only works once, and you're liable for all the later sins, unless expiated with extreme penitence and austerity. Logical, but not attractive, and I think misses an aspect of incarnation.

(*) I mean "mythic" in a good way. The parable that however hard you try, you can't escape the limits of life is always useful--especially to those who think they can hide limits from themselves. "Tomorrow will be like today, but more so."

Attempting maxims

From Anecdotal Evidence, a citation of Hazlitt: "Here his maxim almost succeeds:"

The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savours less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people’s virtues.

"Provocatively true but too long, too blunted. One sentence is usually best. Two will work when the spring is wound sufficiently tight."

Let's sharpen that thing up a bit. We confess proudly, as though our offences were grander than others' virtues.

Give it a shot.

Transporting the tall

When I heard that our local zoo had moved its giraffes elsewhere to allow renovations of their habitat, the first thing that came to mind was: They're too big for a horse trailer. How do they move?

South Africa tried moving some in shipping containers: one hit its head on an overpass and died. They're too big to easily sedate and just tie down; it seems that you have to pack them up as best you can (I assume they use slings, maybe lifted from the floor so you don't have to have somebody walking between the giraffe's legs), and drive carefully. Going around overpasses, I hope.

Have you ever seen Arcanine or Charizard walking about?

One Japanese town created cards with the names, faces, and statistics of men in the town: firemen, community volunteers, and so on.

“We wanted to strengthen the connection between the children and the older generations in the community. There are so many amazing people here. I thought it was such a shame that no one knew about them,” she said in an interview with Fuji News Network (FNN). “Since the card game went viral, so many kids are starting to look up to these men as heroic figures.”

Monitors and resonances

While we tried to get the monitors adjusted this morning, I wondered how old the tool is: pretty recent, as this interesting story shows.

Vitruvius described how Greek and Roman theaters used pots to improve the sound. Generations since have wondered what he meant, since no examples survive, though there are some niches that might hold a bronze container. (Metal was valuable, and re-used elsewhere, while clay pots broke.)

If the resonators made an audible tone, could that confuse the singers and lyre/flute/drum players? The result would be slightly delayed, like reflections in a big hall can be.

Resonators can be used not just to amplify but to dampen inconvenient frequencies too. Reflections off long stone walls can really muddy the sound, making it hard to make out the speaker/singer's words. Some 10th to 16th century churches were built with pots stuffed with sound absorbing stuff built into the walls.

I get itchy when "it is likely" turns up in essays, such as this article:

It is likely that the function of the vases would have been to make some sounds louder than others by allowing them (or the air within them) to sympathetically vibrate when certain harmonics 'hit' them. So, when a singer performs a perfectly intune scale, a number of vases would ring creating a harmonic chord. An artificial reverberation (RT60 time estimated as 0.2-0.5 seconds, Landels) containing only those harmonics listed in the vases pitches would be produced in an open-air theatre that would otherwise have none. There may be another purpose for the vases other than those already mentioned. Some believe the acoustic jars helped singers and those relying on ear for maintaining pitch to keep to proper pitch. As indicated, the resonance of the vases would have given emphasis to important pitches leaving the others silent. If the artificial reverberation concept is difficult to accept, the assisted resonance idea is perhaps a little more attractive. No definitive answer has been found to the question of authenticity and intent with regards Vitruvian resonating vases.

Note that the hypothesis that the singers could hear them and use them to maintain pitch would imply that the singers would hear the slight delay that I mentioned above, which could confuse the timing. Maybe it's true and the drums helped keep the beat. And IIUC an RT60 of 0.5 seconds isn't bad.

So far I haven't found who may tried it out on a large scale: "Ideally, a complete set of vases needs to be made. However, the sheer cost of a minimum of ten bronze vases has presumably prevented most researchers from pursuing the project." Researchers have modeled them in software, and found some enhancement of male speaking voices (the Greeks didn't have actresses, apparently).

The last link lost all its formatting, making it hard to read. In discussing harpsichord resonances it cites Spiteri thus: "the sound of a harpsichord is like two skeletons making love on a corrugated iron roof".

Shattered Sword

The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by John Parshall and Anthony Tully:

A lot of Japanese sources are now available in translation, and the authors took advantage of this. A number of stories about Midway (including some by a now-debunked (at least in Japan) Japanese) are myths, based on either posterior-preserving (as with the Japanese writer) or American misunderstandings and attempted propaganda.

A couple of things: the early attacks on the Japanese carriers were scattershot (the US had lousy command and control of its planes), and that kept the carriers dodging. Dodging meant they couldn't spot planes for an attack on the American carriers, though they could get a few fighters off. But even if they'd gotten an attack off, it was too late; the American planes headed their way had already taken off. If they'd used the American methods, they might have gotten enough planes up to take revenge, but their doctrine demanded a full attack group, and the way they spotted planes, though quite fast, wasn't fast enough under the circumstances.

The Japanese didn't store planes on the flight deck; they fueled and loaded them below and elevatored them up. That meant a bomb that penetrated the flight deck found a very rich environment, and since the lower decks were not open, the bombs' effects were contained and intense.

The story that the American torpedo bombers, though unsuccessful, had kept the defending Zero fighters low enough that they couldn't intercept the high-flying dive bombers that followed--it's a fable. The Zeros were perfectly capable of climbing back up in the minutes before the dive bombers' arrival. What seems to have been more of a problem is Japanese command and control of their own planes--the defending fighters, finding a problem in one sector, piled on, and left the other sectors less defended.

There's more of the backstory too--the surface fleet was kept far away to maintain secrecy, but that meant it was too far away to be of any support. The Attu invasion was not a feint, but part of their 3-pronged grand strategy. Their failed southern prong attack denied them the use of 2 carriers, so they only had 4 at Midway. Yamamoto's directions were ambiguous. And so on.

They write well. I met Parshall a few years ago--he's a nice guy and very knowledgeable. If you're interested in Pacific World War II, read the book.

That previous line reads a little strangely, doesn't it--a peaceful war?

Bookstores

From From Anecdotal Evidence: an essay on booksellers from 1963

My own relations with bookshops began more than forty years ago and they have extended into many countries and to all continents. I have gone to bookshops to buy and browse. I have gone to them to buy books I wanted, and because I just wanted to buy a book, and much of the time just because I wanted to be among books to inhale their presence. My case is an extreme one, and there are perhaps few people in my generation, more or less in their right minds and heavily engaged wvith all sorts of duties, who have spent so much time in bookshops as I have. I have talked with booksellers of every kind, angular Brahmins, mad Ostjuden, motherly widows, elegant patricians, sweet mice, and cagy and distrustful touts.

The retail book trade in new and second-hand books in the United States is in many important respects in an unsatisfactory condition throughout much of the country. There are some bright spots here and there, but on the whole the situation depresses, even appalls me. And it seems to be getting worse. It is not just because of my having less time now and so many books already that bookshops have become less attractive to me. My heart still pants for them "as the hart panteth after the water brook," but all too often it pants without satisfaction.

It's worse in many ways now--Barnes and Noble and Half Price Books are the only survivors within miles of here. Online stores help keep some places afloat, though. FWIW, in one Wyoming store I bought from, books had two prices listed. One was for in-person sales, the other for online.

AI and copyright

"Human authorship and creativity remain essential in the quest to obtain copyright protection"

The famous work "Notes towards the Complete Works of Shakespeare" is not copyrightable because the macaques were not human. (Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Part 2: Copyrightabbility (2025) (Part 2) at 7-8)

The work must contain "some degree of originality and cannot be merely the result of time and effort." Randomness isn't really originality, so I guess "Notes" fails on both counts.

And I suppose if the experiment had been "successful," copyright on the original expired long ago.

More seriously, the office's conclusions seem pretty straightforward: AI-generated stuff (pictures or text or music or whatever) isn't copyrightable. A human has to make substantive contributions. Likely we'll require some case law to square away what "substantive" means, and case-by-case reviews are probably in the future--but we have some of that already. Taking an AI-generated image and redoing it, or moving sections around and changing size--that should probably be copyrightable. However, I'm told that making a good picture still requires artistic skill--the AI, for that artist, merely makes gives her the raw materials to organize and modify.

Dripping

The headline at SciTech is evocative: Scientists Discover That North America Is “Dripping” Down Into Earth’s Mantle.

Although the dripping is concentrated in one area of the craton, Hua said that the plate appears to be interacting with material from across the entire craton, which covers most of the United States and Canada.

“A very broad range is experiencing some thinning,” Hua said.

The image that comes to mind is water dripping from a faucet, which on the small scale is pretty dramatic, with a lot of shake-up. If you scaled that up, you could imagine a blob pinching off under the continent (e.g. New Madrid) with a resulting big up-bounce afterwards.

(Bigger image here)

But the "drip" is into a medium not much less dense than the dip itself, and the sizes involved suggest a much slower and wider "bounce". A simulation suggests "drips" of order 50km and timescales of order millions of years, not seconds.

Stresses and stress relief might trigger some other fault into action, of course.

Signal reaction

The first thing that came to my mind was an alleged Bismarck anecdote, though I haven't found a source.

Bismarck was commenting on the poor ethics of journalists, when a reporter pled "But haven't I always kept secret those things you told me in confidence?" Bismarck barked back, "The more fool you! Do you think I'd say anything to someone in your profession that I didn't want to see in print?"

The complaint about Europe seemed like a carom shot, but details about timing suggest that the incident really was a screw-up--unless they really trusted the recipient's reaction.