First Blog

It is remarkable how much the Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) book, "Walden" has imposed on this world.  He expressed in many ways a utopia of the mind.  He rejected the common desiderata of the day to conform and enjoy the fruits of industrialization.  His book is considered a great work.  And why not? Thoreau was raised in affluence. He attended Harvard and did well.  He studied natural and moral philosophy. He was familiar with Kant and Plato.   He taught for a little while but concluded that when teaching one did not learn much.  Unsatisfactory to him.  He was eccentric, as considered by his colleagues. Like Socrates, he sought the truth, an absolute truth.  This has been a theme over the ages.  Redemption, a type of finding the truth, is a theme of our day. But can you can say if you have been saved, you are ok and on the true path? Thoreau spoke against conformity in an age when the United States was feeling it muscle. It was moving to be the greatest nation on e

Just like sin, hate is easy to sell.    Hate is intense dislike.   Hate is with us always.   In many ways hate is the opposite of “love.” Forms of hate include but are not limited to racism, class warfare, ethnicity, religion, power, spousal, parental, climate, politics, beliefs, and anything contrary to one of the senses, e.g. smell, music.   Probably there are more.     What are your preferences?   Politicians of hate, often called demagogues, are everywhere at every time, in every place. For some, it is a career. Hate is used frequently in our language.   In the database from the “Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English”   based on the 100,000,000 word electronic databank sampled from both spoken and written English   British National Corpus   at http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/bncfreq/flists.html   we obtain the work frequency analysis for nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech.     We exclude articles of speech, pronouns, prepositions, and the like. 

To be "liked" is the ephemeral goal of all weak leaders.  A powerful nation cannot be liked.  It will never be liked.    Even the ancient Romans, though co-opting hundreds of principalities were not liked.  They were tenacious, not weak.   These principalities had become vessel states with duties and tributes to be exacted.  These states gained security, but they did not like their "benefactors."  The Romans well understood this, and made agreements so accommodating this exigency. However, they were feared and respected by their masters.  This is fact. Other ancient powers simply destroyed or totally subjugated their opponents.  This is another model, not quite suited to this day. In the more modern world the aspects of fear and respect are the concomitant twins of international relationships.  There is no master state, but there is the master of circumstance.  There is no dominant force, but there is a possible dominance upon the horizon. Where

My Italian in-laws are arriving on Friday.  We plan to have a big BBQ on Sunday with 40 people invited. It will be quite an affair.  I'm making stuffed jalapenos.  They are good.  I even remove some of the heat of these babies.  The catering is being done by a family friend and also winner of the Houston BBQ contest - ribs category. They are great!!    The crowd arrives about 3, and the party goes to 8. Looking forward to this event, but 40 folks is a lot. Lots of fun for all.  Hope to be in bed by 10.  Probably not.

I'm sure this one will get me in trouble.  It is offered only tongue-in-cheek,  total accuracy not implied.  It seems to be differentiated on both sides.  I'm sure some of them will offend some of you, but I don't than any of you will be offended by all of them.  Enjoy. ·          Pelosi: I'd love to pass more laws I haven’t read. ·          Schumer: I’ll do anything I’m told. Also, you note I'm an intellectual. ·          Boehner: I don’t like it. ·          Paul: This is unjust for the people and for the government to enact. ·          Christie: I am for my state no matter what I need to do. ·          Obama: I’m no Dick Cheney. ·          Durbin: I'm a tody from Chicogy. ·          Romney: I believe in the goodness of man. ·          Priebus: I just don’t know what happened. ·          Cheney: We did what we had to.   I’m no Obama ·          Palen: I’m against most everything liberal. ·          Santorum: Forget internationalism.   Let’s fight

Have recently completed the historical text: The Ghosts of Cannae : Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic by Robert L. O'Connell.  As I usually do, I look for some fundamental principle.  It applies in this case, but as always, I generalize. Exhaustion must be a strategic tool of warfare.   One could even argue it is a tactical method, though I know of few examples.   One could argue this is the point of a siege.   Exhaustion at Cannae meant that tens of thousands of Roman soldiers could not continue the fight and died on the very hot day in summer by lack of water, leadership, and tactics.   Exhaustion was an important tool of Hannibal on that dreadful day 23 centuries ago.  Exhaustion in the modern sense is more mental, perhaps political, certainly for the aged.   It implies an opponent that simply tires of the battle, having given so much for so little.   Exhaustion applies to corporate conflicts, to governments, to personal conflicts, to marital rela

This is the first of several parts. The first part is a bit grim, but I think accurate. A. Warfare of this century will take at least three forms.   (a) The classical battle between opponents in an open death conflict.   (b) The terrorist war of subterfuge and secret demolition.   (3) The electronic war of information, deceit, and deception.   This later new warfare is unlike that of the entire history of humanity.   It is disjointed, distanced, disconnected, and distributed in nature.   Leaders accustomed to confronting their opponent on the field will be surely defeated.   They cannot conceive of a battle without visible personality or at any rate a hidden lethal opponent secreted in a cave.   They cannot survive an unknown and unseen and undiscoverable enemy.    Such are the enemies of the great powers of the day.   Hidden, intelligent, vicious, subtle, disconnected they all are.   It is conducted on a twenty-four hour basis, every day, probing, stealing, and disrupting. The

The time has come to seriously consider the implications of all the data the US government is collecting and consuming about its citizens.    For the first time in all of history, a government can peer into the private communications and by deflection the private thoughts of its citizens.   First, with the full neural net of information of interconnections between people, it must now be assumed to be known the full interconnectivity of persons of note.   Not just potential terrorists but politicians, would-be politicians, authors, commentators, newscasters, executives, even pundits, and more are swept up by this net.       If you have “arrived” you are known and fully analyzed.   Your habits are known, your pleasures are known, and so also are your friends.       A little background comes first. About Edward Snowden, the now high profile leak in the NSA snooping scandal.   It is not what he did at this point, it is about what information he carried with him.   This fellow se