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Showing posts from November, 2011

Goodbye to the "Hobnail Boot"

When I was in my early and mid-teens, my dad and I spent most every Saturday during the winter months cutting trees on our farm and clearing land for more pasture. We hauled most of what we cut off one truck load at a time, selling it for pulp wood. During the infrequent rest periods when dad had to re-sharpen his chain saws or we took a water break, he let me turn on the fiddly radio in the truck and I got to listen to the Georgia Bulldogs play football. It was my first contact with the legendary Larry Munson . At that time, Munson had already been announcing Georgia football for about ten years. His distinctive style of delivery , his sense of excitement and attention to detail , his willingness to get inside the Georgia fan’s head and seem to express exactly what everyone was thinking at a given point in a given game, made him incomparable to me. Whenever I got a chance to watch a Georgia game on TV, I always turned the sound down (as did most other Georgia football fans) and liste

The Reality of Tahrir Square

The Egyptian military attacked protesters in Tahir Square today . Some 1100 civilians have been injured through weeks of violence all over Egypt as thousands of people attempt to protest the way the Egyptian military wants to handle the new Egyptian constitution. This crisis has been going on for months and has perhaps reached the boiling point. The military has promised elections within a week but their original deadline has already past . The military wants its budget and operations to be autonomous of the new government. Many Egyptians fear a state-within-a-state would exist . So they protest. Al Jazeera has excellent coverage . Unlike the birth of the Arab Spring , however, the poetry of protest is gone. This is about the interim military government ceasing power long enough to protect its infrastructure and capabilities. This conflicts with the democratic ideals and the situation seems to be escalating . In Egypt today it seems democracy itself might be up for grabs . Prote

11/11/11

The War to End All Wars , also known as the Great War , also known as World War One ended 93 years ago today. The document ending the war went into effect famously (at the time) at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month . Until 1954 this was referred to in the US as Armistice Day . But, as time passed by, that phrasing began to mean less and less to anyone. All things pass. So, now this is Veterans Day ; certainly a worthy holiday to honor those who have served our country in all wars. But, today I am not thinking of all veterans. I am thinking of those who once walked this Earth that experienced the great battles of the Somme and Verdun and Gallipoli . These were battles of almost unimaginable magnitude during that war. The military art of war adapted very slowly to the technological achievements of that time. Supreme among innovations here was the use of massed, large-caliber artillery pieces and the widespread use of mounted machine guns. As World War One settled into a

The Biggest Dodge-Ball Game of All

We think of space as this vast, empty void when, in fact, it is filled with all sorts of things. Dark matter . Small solar system bodies like comets and asteroids . The solar wind . Cosmic dust . Other stuff . There's all kinds of debris in an almost endless variety of trajectories out there. The Earth, as with the other planets, is nested in a fairly stable orbit around our Sun. But, that doesn't mean our orbit is free from all the possible collisions with debris of various sizes. In fact, the Earth is hit by about 40,000 tons of various types of space debris every year . This is not counting all the space junk launched by humans in the past that periodically falls back to Earth. So, our planet's collision with tiny particles of star dust is a routine, every day occurrence. But, if you widen your perspective beyond the stretch of your life span you will see that every few million years something far larger than interstellar dust strikes. A large asteroid came within 202

Mylo Xyloto

Coldplay always makes me feel good. As I have posted before , Coldplay is my favorite contemporary band. Essentially, they have evolved into a nice blend of indie spunk with enough pop undertones to make them a mega-band . But, that’s not why I like them. I like them because their music always makes me feel good. Coldplay began with a powerful and popular debut album in 2000 and continued through the turn of the century and a great follow-up in 2002 which, in turn, was followed by a really great live CD/DVD combo . They are formula-matic in their own style, which blends many influences. Mostly, however, Coldplay’s music is filled with teen/young-adult angst and dreams and desires and melancholia, ensconced with an energetic, young at heart passion for living. After giant-selling albums in 2005 and 2008 and strong, sold-out worldwide tours, the band had difficulty giving birth to Mylo Xyloto , only their fifth studio album. Coldplay is not a very prolific band but their music is a

Let's Play Go To Mars

Late yesterday one of my employees emailed me a link asking: "Would you volunteer for this?" Friday marked the end of a somewhat absurd yet scientifically important (I guess) experiment costing $15 million dollars and involving six men who pretended to be astronaunts (technically "cosmonauts", which is an interesting contrast in terms when you think about it) going to, exploring, and returning from Mars. The experiment lasted 520 days and involved a "fake" landing on Mars where two of the "crew members" donned 70-pound suits and marched around in a dark sand-filled room designed to simulate the surface of Mars. That image struck me as incredibly funny and my employee and I enjoyed a good laugh. A closer reading of the story revealed that this was not the first time this experiement had been attempted. Back in 2000, a different mix of "crew" involved at least one woman. The "mission" had to be interrupted when two male crew

We Can't Win It Long Enough

Upon further reflection, my post of October 24 on America’s war in Afghanistan was somewhat confused and unpolished. It is reflective of too much happening in my life right now, too many work and family things to remember, too many different thoughts and facts about the war to sift through, and simply not thinking coherently. To simplify and be more precise, my overall view of the war is that, like Vietnam but unlike Korea , this is not a conventional war . In military terms it is a guerrilla war . This is my perspective. The more conventional the war, the more important the purely military considerations are over other important factors like politics and culture. By contrast, in a guerrilla war the military aspects are diminished, though not to the point of unimportance. Politics and culture matter more and often trump the military reality. At the same time, economics theoretically trumps everything but America can afford a drastically scaled-back scenario in Afghanistan . I have no

To the Dark Side of Saturn

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A 2006 photo taken by the Cassini-Huygens space probe. I found it earlier this year at this site . The planet is back lit with our Sun just barely peeking over the lower left edge of the planet, about a billion miles away. I remember sitting in my office in my former life as a marketing and training officer of a small financial institution holding company in October of 1997 watching a video online of the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft launch. It had occurred very early on the morning of October 15. Too early for me to catch it live on the internet. So, I saw the replay on the NASA website. It was exciting to me. Our first serious space mission to Saturn . It would take 7 years for the spacecraft to reach Saturn’s orbit. I wondered where I would be in 7 years. Little did I suspect that halfway through that time-frame the holding company would be sold to a major regional player and I would be forced to switch career paths for the fifth time in my life. It was the heyday of the Clinton years