Re:This is Neal's Best Book Yet
on
Anathem
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· Score: 1
As in "theatre of war", dumbass.
I'm in Afghanistan.
DG
This is Neal's Best Book Yet
on
Anathem
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I read this book on the plane on the way into theatre.
This is Neal's best book yet. His work is high concept, intellectually challenging stuff that winds up educating as much as it entertains, and past Stephanson works have wobbled back and forth between action and education. This one gets it exactly right. It starts slow, but it has to, as there are a lot of new concepts to introduce and a whole different world to paint in before we can get going with the main story. As we learn and gain confidence with the new vocabulary (and there is a lot of it, although it is cleverly constructed to provide semantic clues as to what it means in "our world") he builds and builds on what he has already contructed, and before you know it, we are fully immersed in the culture of Arbre - at which points the story takes off and you can't put the damn book down.
And unlike some of his other work (Diamond Age?) this book ends strong.
I love how this book isn't written to the lowest common denominator. I love that it is willing to tackle things like philosophy, the nature of conciousness, the ramifications of the "many worlds" theory of the cosmos, thinking "long view" with people who only live a short time, and many other subjects, while still wrapping the whole thing up in an entertaining yarn.
After I finished, I felt smarter. How many other authors can pull that off?
DG
Re:"Nerd" is a cop-out
on
American Nerd
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· Score: 1
No worries - and as a bonus, you've just proved my point.
You responded in a social situation by coming out swinging - arguably (and I'm not trying to name-call) an inappropriate response. But you recognised the inappropriateness (to whatever degree actually existed) and compensated for that in the next exchange.
In this, you were assisted by how I responded to your response - rather than responding in a matching hostile or angry fashion, I chose to respond to the facts of the argument and keep the tone less confrontational - and I did that BY DESIGN. Which, ultimately, resulted in a better outcome than two idiots yelling at each other over the Internet.
You see, that's a *learned skill*. I have learned (mostly) when and where to be confrontational or not, and by interacting with someone like that, you too have learned a little about how to interact with someone. You demonstrated it in your very next post.
(OK, maybe not in a life-changing amount, but learning is mostly a series of baby steps, not giant leaps.)
This stuff absolutely can be learned and taught. Some through life experience, but also through books and courses the exact same way you learn any other skill. I have taken the Army's Alternate Dispute Resolution course and I have seen it knock the rough edges off of guys with horrible social skills.
And the Dale Carnegie book (which has been around since 1920 or something) is really very special. It's not one of those Oprah-book-of-the-week deals, but an actual textbook on inter-personal relations that has stood the test of time.
What I find sad is when I see gifted people, smart people, who maybe lack some social skills that are completely learnable, refuse to do so because they self-categorise as a "nerd" - and we all know that "nerds" lack social skills. Poppycock! Hogwash! One's intelligence or technical ability is NOT a zero-sum game with one's sociability, and thinking it is is a cop-out and excuse for not learning the skill in the first place.
DG
Re:"Nerd" is a cop-out
on
American Nerd
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· Score: 1
I don't buy that at all. People may have different inclinations and interests, but barring actual mental dysfunction (in a clinical sense) you can train people to do anything, given enough time and patience and decent instruction.
Some will learn quicker than others, and not everybody can reach the same level of expertise, but ANYBODY can learn to function socially. It is just a matter of the will to practice.
Thanks about the book - but I think "geek" not "nerd". I was a "nerd" once, but I learned the social skills.;)
DG
Re:"Nerd" is a cop-out
on
American Nerd
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· Score: 1
You have entirely missed the point.
Humans are social creatures. It is impossible to live your life without human contact - you can minimize it if you wish, but you can never avoid it completely.
But the skills involved with interacting with your fellow humans are NOT innate - they take practice like everything else. Social skills are LEARNED skills, and it takes learning and practice to master them, every bit as much as any technical skill.
It's not about "not acting like myself" at all; it is about learning how to be true to yourself while still retaining the ability to participate in social activity. Someone is who is good in social situations while still retaining what other skills he values is a better man than one who is "socially inept" and to afraid or too lazy to take the time to learn those skills.
As far as the book goes - would you turn up your nose at the Camel book if you are working in perl? Are you too good to refer to "The C Programming Language" if you work in C? Did you learn thermodynamics, or Fourier Transforms, or partial differential equations, without reference to a textbook?
Then why turn up your nose at a social interaction textbook? You should try reading it; it might change your life.
DG
"Nerd" is a cop-out
on
American Nerd
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· Score: 2, Informative
The stereotypical nerd is good at some sort of intellectual pursuit, but socially awkward.
Over and over I see people slotting themselves into these stereotypes "Oh, I'm a good coder so I must be a social disaster".
It's a cop-out. A crutch. An excuse.
Social skills are skills like any other. There are physical aspects to it, as well as intellectual aspects, but it is no *harder* to learn how to interoperate with other people than it is to program C.
The crucial difference of course is that a coding mistake results in an error message where a social mistake can result in embarassment. But so what? Embarassment is not fatal, we learn through our mistakes, and people love a great ugly-duckling story; what better way to recover from embarassment and awkwardness than becoming the suave ex-nerd?
Pick up a copy of "How to Wind Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie - lame title but solid, solid advice - and go try it out. Talk to people. Make some friends. Treat social interaction like it was a new coding language and learn how to do it - life becomes SO much easier when you do.
I'm not sure if this particular plant does this, but I remember reading a proposal a number of years ago that discussed using a similar process to "crack" garbage much the same way as cracking crude oil.
Because plasmafication reduces everything to component atoms, you'd be able to separate out each element and collect it - so all that evil carbon could be collected and stored.
For a nifty problem, figure out how to mix the carbon with the oxygen and hydrogen and whatnot and have it produce pure gasoline as a by-product.
It's the mother of all recyclers - and you can extract power from it too. What's not to like?
My parent post is actually an obscure reference to a running gag perpetrated during the early 90's by Circle Track magazine - back when it was a technical mag and not "NASCAR People"
One of their readers wrote a letter to their tech column asking about the Landau tops he had seen on a couple of NASCAR Winston Cup cars (this was back in the days when Stock Cars really started life as factory-floor "stock" cars) and if said Landau tops had conferred any sort of racing advantage.
The Circle Track tech staff - who at the time included one Smokey Yunick - jumped on it, provided the "golf ball boundary layer" explanation, and a legend was born.
I figured I'd break it out again and see if I could get a nibble....
Don't you remember all the cars back in the 80's that had textured vinyl (Landau) tops?
That was a direct response to the fuel crisis of the mid 70's. The pebbled texture of the vinyl roof allowed the boundary layer to remain attached longer and directly reduced the amount of drag on the vehicle, increasing fuel economy my a couple of MPG.
A couple of clued-in NASCAR teams adopted it for their race cars.
Sadly, the vinyl roof was subject to the whims of fashion and styling and died out in the 90's - just in time for electronic fuel injection and real-time O2 sensor feedback to make milage gains on the powertrain side.
With the current fuel crisis, I imagine we might see the return of the vinyl roof.
You think *you* had it tough? We had to figure out all the fundamental constants of the universe and then tough off the Big Bang and wait for limbs and blood to **evolve** before we could paint on the cave walls.
You "we inherited an inhabited universe" guys had it *so* easy compared to us. Did *you* ever work out the ideal value of Plank's Constant by trial end error? I don't think so.
Back when I was going to school for my Comp Sci degree, I was force-fed a lot of calculus.
Roughly twice as much calculus as was typical, because my disinterest (and the resultant lack of success) required me to take almost every single calculus course twice.
No sooner was I free of school than I brain-dumped every single last integral, deriviative, partial derivative, chain rule, trigometric identity... the lot of it. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
And then, some time later, I was trying to make my race car go faster. The problem was optimising the suspension for maximum grip, and to that end, I had affixed linear potentiometers to my suspension so I could record suspension position during a race.
Pretty soon, I had tons of data relating position to time. Pretty graphs, but aside from max/min/mean deflection data, pretty useless.
Until I started thinking about "position to time... position to time... where had I heard that before?"
That's right - my old arch-nemesis, calculus, suddenly proved useful. Deriving that position information gave me suspension velocity, and suddenly I knew EXACTLY what suspension velocities the car was seeing in actual competition. Given that I had a device that measured shock force as a function of velocity (that's how a shock works) I could now tune shocks independant of the driver's ass-dyno.
That resulted in a HUGE leap forward in my performance.
Don't dis abstract math - you never know when it'll pay off.
And that's precicely my point: the "Armed overthrow of the US Government" scenario, which is used all the time as justification for the 2cnd Amendment, simply doesn't work.
To make effective political change, you have to employ political means.
Interestingly, the IRA learned the same lesson. They were far, far more effective as "Sein Fien" (or however you spell it) than as the Irish Republican Army. As the IRA, they started off as the "true freedom loving sons of Ireland", but by the end, they were narco-terrorist thugs. They didn't start to make progress towards their political goals until they stopped blowing up schoolgirls.
In countries like Afghanistan, you have no security infrastructure what so ever. Lacking that security infrastructure, the would-be insurgant can have some success (although it is very difficult to transition from rebel to government). But in established countries? Now way.
The NYPD alone is better trained, better armed, and bigger than most 3rd world armies....
Except, of course, that is not how it would be portrayed.
You have to think about how this would play out:
The argument that keeps getting trotted out about the 2cnd Amendment is that armed citzens would have the power to fight the government and overthrow it, whereas unarmed citizens would not. Right?
So let's say you and a bunch of your buddies decide the the current US Government is an oppressive and evil regime. Let's say you decide that it is time to exercise that option you feel is implicit in the 2cnd Amendment, and that you are going to overthrow the government.
And for the sake of keeping things simple, let's assume you do not seek help from a foreign power, nor are you being manipulated by a foreign power for their own ends under the guise of assistance - that is a bit of a stretch given the things usually work, but it makes this discussion overly complex, so we'll pretend otherwise.
It is reasonably simple to acquire assualt rifles in the US, so it is safe to assume you and your buddies can arm yourself with semi-auto rifles in the 5.56 or 7.62 class. You might maybe be able to lay hands on an MMG or two. Grenades, RPGs, land mines, and light mortars are out of your reach, but you can build home made explosives out of fertilizer simply enough.
Now you have a tactical choice: you can openly seize a seat of government and claim revolution, or you can play "4th generation warrior" and carry out hit and run attacks on government institutions.
If you play 4GW, you will be labelled terrorists, and will be treated as such. Your attacks WILL kill civillians (even if YOU consider govenerment workets legit targets, that's not how it will be portrayed) and it will be next to impossible to build any sort of support. How much sympathy did Tim McVey generate?
You will be fought with police assets at first, but depending on how sucessful you are, those assets will eventually swing towards military. It is not at all unlikely that your area of operations would be placed under martial law until you are rooted out.
And here's the thing - the local populace will WELCOME the martial law, because you as terrorists and bombers are threats to life, limb and security and so are the BAD GUYS.
If you instead choose to sieze a government seat and take a stand, you probably will still be labelled as terrorists, but your information operations campaign has a much better position because at least you aren't blowing people up. You will probably create a standoff, as you hole up in whatever institution you have captured while security forces surround you. Assuming you aren't so stupid as to keep or kill hostages, you should have an opportunity to get your message out while the powers that be discuss what to do with you.
Odds are they will not attempt to flush you out right away, as everybody prefers a non-violent solution, and Waco is very much on the minds of security force planners nowadays. Instead, they just wait you out....unless you go on the offensive, at which point you will be smashed flat - to the cheers of your fellow Americans who like to see the forces of law and order triumph over wackos and nutjobs - especially if you killed a policeman or soldier in the process.
Remember: you are ARMED. Shooting at you isn't the same as firing into a group of quietly protesting civillians or random bystanders. By arming yourselves, you make yourselves combatants.
There is no scenario in which you and your armed buddies come across as the good guys. At worst, you are terrorists; at best, misguided nutjobs.
The only time when it doesn't matter how you are percieved is when you are capable of exerting enough force to win through main strength - and if you try that, you are hopelessly outgunned.
The bottom line here is that there is no way in modern times to effect overthrow of the US Govenrment through armed insurrection. Can't happen. And that makes the 2cd Amendment pointless.
And what you (and many others; you're in good company) keep overlooking is that A COUNTRY FACING ARMED INSURRECTION FROM ITS OWN PEOPLE CANNOT QUIT AND GO HOME.
That is doubly true when the insurgents don't have widespread popular support, and when there are pervasive and effective security forces (police and military) operating throughout the state.
The Cuba example fails that test, as the Cuban security forces were niether pervasive nor effective, and where the rebels had popular support.
Faced with the succession of the South, the US chose to go to war with its own people. Not only did it do so, it WON - in the face of the worst casulties ever faced by the American people. THAT is the model here, not foreign occupiers of remote countries, nor tiny countries with little security infrastructure or government.
You overestimate the vulnerability of equipment to EMP.
And you underestimate the ability of armed force to intimidate a population, especially when that armed force wears the uniform of legitimate (if not necessarily moral) authority.
Let's say you form a citzen millitia. Let's say you get as much as a battalion's worth of fighters. Let's say you occupy a rural town, and declare it free of the evil influence of the federal and state governments.
When the National Guard (who, poor cousins to the real army that they may be, are still far better equipped than your rebel force can ever dream) move to retake the town, who do you think the rest of the country will be cheering for?
Will Fox News be rooting for the defeat of the National Guard?
We're not talking about the Army firing into a crowd of peaceful protesters here; we're talking about an armed insurrection on US soil. How are you going to mobilize the masses when you are the bad guys?
Young? I think I'm probably older than you are. 21 years in the Army, and still going, thanks.
Those lessons you are talking about with regards to asymmetrical warfare don't apply in the case of the second amendment, because it is safe to assume that the US Army would be free to smash any home-grown insurgants flat, without regard to collateral damage, because the battle-front and the home-front would be one and the same.
This is unlike every example you cited, including your own American Revolution, because in every one of those examples, the "pro" army was fighting on foreign soil and could afford to quit.
As soon as you know the enemy *can* quit, then yes, you can keep plugging away with raids and ambushes, inflicting what casulties you can, and refusing to give open battle to a superior force - until the day when they finally cross whatever threshold triggers the decision to give up and go home.
Sometimes that threshold is high - Soviets in Afghanistan, US in Vietnam. Sometimes it is much lower - US in Somalia.
But none of this applies in a "US vs US" conflict. The American government would pull no punches in an armed insurrection on American soil. That has already been demonstrated, in the American Civil War.
If you have American rebels attempting to overthrow the US government, then the government cannot afford to quit. Where can it go? It has to fight to win, and clean up the mess afterwards. That group of rebels would be facing the raw, unadulterated might of the American military machine, and it would not survive the encounter.
That being the case, the Second Amendment is toothless. Your right to own an M16 varient will do you no good whatsever against a single tank, never mind an amroured division.
DISCLAIMER: I am posting from Kandahar City, Afghanistan, where I am stationed for the next little while.
The example you cite - the American Revolution - hasn't been applicable to the real world since the last years of the American Civil War.
The time period from the early 1700s to the late 1800s was dominated by the smoothbore, muzzle-loading musket, and its big brother, the smoothbore, muzzle-loading, solid-shot cannon (of which there were few in the Colonies)
An American Rebel, armed with a flintlock Kentucky Rifle, carried a weapon that was the technological equal of his British Regular Army counterpart. In some ways (range and accuracy) it was superior; in others (rate of fire) inferior. Employed properly, entirely comparable.
The success of armies in this era was largely a function of discipline, leadership, and logistics. If you had a cause sufficient to unite men in common purpose, leaders with enough tactical acumen to employ them, and paid attention to the problems of supply, it was entirely possible to go head to head with a national, professional, regular army and win outright on the battlefield - especially if your "professional" opponent was lacking in one of these vital areas.
That is no longer the case. No militia is capable of withstanding the kind of destructive force a modern combat team (a company of mechanized infantry, a troop of tanks, and two artillery pieces) is capable of putting out.
The insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan die - in large numbers - any time they try to go toe-to-toe with modern combat forces. It's no contest; so hopelessly lopsided that it's almost pathetic.
The only weapon that is at all effective is the Improvised Explosive Device (basically a really big land mine) but the IED is not a decisive weapon; it is a harassment tactic, not a war-winner.
The insurgent plays off our unwillingness to inflict civillian casulties. If we take fire from a village, it is entirely within our combat power to stop the entire village flat (in seconds!) to get him. We choose not to for very good reasons.
But if a government WERE willing to inflict those kinds of casulties (and please note that I am NOT advocating such a course of action) any would-be rebels would find themselves in a world of hurt very quickly. The idea that a self-organized citizen militia could take on and defeat the US Army, Navy, and Air Force is simply laughable.
Yes, the North Vietnamese pulled it off, but that was because the will to do what was necessary to win wasn't there. Within the boundaries of the United States proper, however, it is safe to say that will exists, given that the army that has killed more Americans than all other armies in all other American wars *combined* is the US Army. Ask Lincoln and Grant if they had the will to do what was necessary to win. or better yet, ask Lee.
Your Second Amendment is nice in theory. In practice, it is a paper tiger.
Back in the 80s, when Bloom County was at its height, I had a paper route delivering the Vancouver Sun - which, naturally, ran Bloom County as one of its regular strips.
The highlight of Saturday was reading the color strips - and I distinctly remember "Pear pimples for hairy fishnuts? - Just hand the dough over Mac!" incapacitating me for almost half an hour. Every time I thought I had the laughter under control, it'd hit me again, and the giggles would recommence.
OK, so I was like 14 years old and easily amused. But still... quite possibly Funniest Strip Ever.
I still have a large collection of original 80s vintage Bloom County strips saved in a filing cabinet at home.
Yes, Outland and Opus were a little bitterer; a little less fun than the halycon Bloom County days, but Breathed never lost his genius. The Outland strip "Perhaps you had better reassess what gives your lives meaning" strip is as good as any Bloom County work.
I'm sad to see Opus waddle off into the sunset... especially because I think he means it this time.
Slashdot Mirror
As in "theatre of war", dumbass.
I'm in Afghanistan.
DG
I read this book on the plane on the way into theatre.
This is Neal's best book yet. His work is high concept, intellectually challenging stuff that winds up educating as much as it entertains, and past Stephanson works have wobbled back and forth between action and education. This one gets it exactly right. It starts slow, but it has to, as there are a lot of new concepts to introduce and a whole different world to paint in before we can get going with the main story. As we learn and gain confidence with the new vocabulary (and there is a lot of it, although it is cleverly constructed to provide semantic clues as to what it means in "our world") he builds and builds on what he has already contructed, and before you know it, we are fully immersed in the culture of Arbre - at which points the story takes off and you can't put the damn book down.
And unlike some of his other work (Diamond Age?) this book ends strong.
I love how this book isn't written to the lowest common denominator. I love that it is willing to tackle things like philosophy, the nature of conciousness, the ramifications of the "many worlds" theory of the cosmos, thinking "long view" with people who only live a short time, and many other subjects, while still wrapping the whole thing up in an entertaining yarn.
After I finished, I felt smarter. How many other authors can pull that off?
DG
No worries - and as a bonus, you've just proved my point.
You responded in a social situation by coming out swinging - arguably (and I'm not trying to name-call) an inappropriate response. But you recognised the inappropriateness (to whatever degree actually existed) and compensated for that in the next exchange.
In this, you were assisted by how I responded to your response - rather than responding in a matching hostile or angry fashion, I chose to respond to the facts of the argument and keep the tone less confrontational - and I did that BY DESIGN. Which, ultimately, resulted in a better outcome than two idiots yelling at each other over the Internet.
You see, that's a *learned skill*. I have learned (mostly) when and where to be confrontational or not, and by interacting with someone like that, you too have learned a little about how to interact with someone. You demonstrated it in your very next post.
(OK, maybe not in a life-changing amount, but learning is mostly a series of baby steps, not giant leaps.)
This stuff absolutely can be learned and taught. Some through life experience, but also through books and courses the exact same way you learn any other skill. I have taken the Army's Alternate Dispute Resolution course and I have seen it knock the rough edges off of guys with horrible social skills.
And the Dale Carnegie book (which has been around since 1920 or something) is really very special. It's not one of those Oprah-book-of-the-week deals, but an actual textbook on inter-personal relations that has stood the test of time.
What I find sad is when I see gifted people, smart people, who maybe lack some social skills that are completely learnable, refuse to do so because they self-categorise as a "nerd" - and we all know that "nerds" lack social skills. Poppycock! Hogwash! One's intelligence or technical ability is NOT a zero-sum game with one's sociability, and thinking it is is a cop-out and excuse for not learning the skill in the first place.
DG
I don't buy that at all. People may have different inclinations and interests, but barring actual mental dysfunction (in a clinical sense) you can train people to do anything, given enough time and patience and decent instruction.
Some will learn quicker than others, and not everybody can reach the same level of expertise, but ANYBODY can learn to function socially. It is just a matter of the will to practice.
Thanks about the book - but I think "geek" not "nerd". I was a "nerd" once, but I learned the social skills. ;)
DG
You have entirely missed the point.
Humans are social creatures. It is impossible to live your life without human contact - you can minimize it if you wish, but you can never avoid it completely.
But the skills involved with interacting with your fellow humans are NOT innate - they take practice like everything else. Social skills are LEARNED skills, and it takes learning and practice to master them, every bit as much as any technical skill.
It's not about "not acting like myself" at all; it is about learning how to be true to yourself while still retaining the ability to participate in social activity. Someone is who is good in social situations while still retaining what other skills he values is a better man than one who is "socially inept" and to afraid or too lazy to take the time to learn those skills.
As far as the book goes - would you turn up your nose at the Camel book if you are working in perl? Are you too good to refer to "The C Programming Language" if you work in C? Did you learn thermodynamics, or Fourier Transforms, or partial differential equations, without reference to a textbook?
Then why turn up your nose at a social interaction textbook? You should try reading it; it might change your life.
DG
The stereotypical nerd is good at some sort of intellectual pursuit, but socially awkward.
Over and over I see people slotting themselves into these stereotypes "Oh, I'm a good coder so I must be a social disaster".
It's a cop-out. A crutch. An excuse.
Social skills are skills like any other. There are physical aspects to it, as well as intellectual aspects, but it is no *harder* to learn how to interoperate with other people than it is to program C.
The crucial difference of course is that a coding mistake results in an error message where a social mistake can result in embarassment. But so what? Embarassment is not fatal, we learn through our mistakes, and people love a great ugly-duckling story; what better way to recover from embarassment and awkwardness than becoming the suave ex-nerd?
Pick up a copy of "How to Wind Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie - lame title but solid, solid advice - and go try it out. Talk to people. Make some friends. Treat social interaction like it was a new coding language and learn how to do it - life becomes SO much easier when you do.
DG
You must be new here....
DG
It was the fusion torch I was thimking of, thanks.
DG
I'm not sure if this particular plant does this, but I remember reading a proposal a number of years ago that discussed using a similar process to "crack" garbage much the same way as cracking crude oil.
Because plasmafication reduces everything to component atoms, you'd be able to separate out each element and collect it - so all that evil carbon could be collected and stored.
For a nifty problem, figure out how to mix the carbon with the oxygen and hydrogen and whatnot and have it produce pure gasoline as a by-product.
It's the mother of all recyclers - and you can extract power from it too. What's not to like?
DG
Heh.
My parent post is actually an obscure reference to a running gag perpetrated during the early 90's by Circle Track magazine - back when it was a technical mag and not "NASCAR People"
One of their readers wrote a letter to their tech column asking about the Landau tops he had seen on a couple of NASCAR Winston Cup cars (this was back in the days when Stock Cars really started life as factory-floor "stock" cars) and if said Landau tops had conferred any sort of racing advantage.
The Circle Track tech staff - who at the time included one Smokey Yunick - jumped on it, provided the "golf ball boundary layer" explanation, and a legend was born.
I figured I'd break it out again and see if I could get a nibble....
DG
What, nobody has read Anathem?
DG
Don't you remember all the cars back in the 80's that had textured vinyl (Landau) tops?
That was a direct response to the fuel crisis of the mid 70's. The pebbled texture of the vinyl roof allowed the boundary layer to remain attached longer and directly reduced the amount of drag on the vehicle, increasing fuel economy my a couple of MPG.
A couple of clued-in NASCAR teams adopted it for their race cars.
Sadly, the vinyl roof was subject to the whims of fashion and styling and died out in the 90's - just in time for electronic fuel injection and real-time O2 sensor feedback to make milage gains on the powertrain side.
With the current fuel crisis, I imagine we might see the return of the vinyl roof.
DG
Young whippersnapper.
You think *you* had it tough? We had to figure out all the fundamental constants of the universe and then tough off the Big Bang and wait for limbs and blood to **evolve** before we could paint on the cave walls.
You "we inherited an inhabited universe" guys had it *so* easy compared to us. Did *you* ever work out the ideal value of Plank's Constant by trial end error? I don't think so.
Meh. Kids today.
DG
Mine Shaft!
DG
Back when I was going to school for my Comp Sci degree, I was force-fed a lot of calculus.
Roughly twice as much calculus as was typical, because my disinterest (and the resultant lack of success) required me to take almost every single calculus course twice.
No sooner was I free of school than I brain-dumped every single last integral, deriviative, partial derivative, chain rule, trigometric identity... the lot of it. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
And then, some time later, I was trying to make my race car go faster. The problem was optimising the suspension for maximum grip, and to that end, I had affixed linear potentiometers to my suspension so I could record suspension position during a race.
Pretty soon, I had tons of data relating position to time. Pretty graphs, but aside from max/min/mean deflection data, pretty useless.
Until I started thinking about "position to time... position to time... where had I heard that before?"
That's right - my old arch-nemesis, calculus, suddenly proved useful. Deriving that position information gave me suspension velocity, and suddenly I knew EXACTLY what suspension velocities the car was seeing in actual competition. Given that I had a device that measured shock force as a function of velocity (that's how a shock works) I could now tune shocks independant of the driver's ass-dyno.
That resulted in a HUGE leap forward in my performance.
Don't dis abstract math - you never know when it'll pay off.
DG
Shed no tears for these guys - the stuff they have done to their own people is frankly horrific.
DG
And that's precicely my point: the "Armed overthrow of the US Government" scenario, which is used all the time as justification for the 2cnd Amendment, simply doesn't work.
To make effective political change, you have to employ political means.
Interestingly, the IRA learned the same lesson. They were far, far more effective as "Sein Fien" (or however you spell it) than as the Irish Republican Army. As the IRA, they started off as the "true freedom loving sons of Ireland", but by the end, they were narco-terrorist thugs. They didn't start to make progress towards their political goals until they stopped blowing up schoolgirls.
In countries like Afghanistan, you have no security infrastructure what so ever. Lacking that security infrastructure, the would-be insurgant can have some success (although it is very difficult to transition from rebel to government). But in established countries? Now way.
The NYPD alone is better trained, better armed, and bigger than most 3rd world armies....
DG
Except, of course, that is not how it would be portrayed.
You have to think about how this would play out:
The argument that keeps getting trotted out about the 2cnd Amendment is that armed citzens would have the power to fight the government and overthrow it, whereas unarmed citizens would not. Right?
So let's say you and a bunch of your buddies decide the the current US Government is an oppressive and evil regime. Let's say you decide that it is time to exercise that option you feel is implicit in the 2cnd Amendment, and that you are going to overthrow the government.
And for the sake of keeping things simple, let's assume you do not seek help from a foreign power, nor are you being manipulated by a foreign power for their own ends under the guise of assistance - that is a bit of a stretch given the things usually work, but it makes this discussion overly complex, so we'll pretend otherwise.
It is reasonably simple to acquire assualt rifles in the US, so it is safe to assume you and your buddies can arm yourself with semi-auto rifles in the 5.56 or 7.62 class. You might maybe be able to lay hands on an MMG or two. Grenades, RPGs, land mines, and light mortars are out of your reach, but you can build home made explosives out of fertilizer simply enough.
Now you have a tactical choice: you can openly seize a seat of government and claim revolution, or you can play "4th generation warrior" and carry out hit and run attacks on government institutions.
If you play 4GW, you will be labelled terrorists, and will be treated as such. Your attacks WILL kill civillians (even if YOU consider govenerment workets legit targets, that's not how it will be portrayed) and it will be next to impossible to build any sort of support. How much sympathy did Tim McVey generate?
You will be fought with police assets at first, but depending on how sucessful you are, those assets will eventually swing towards military. It is not at all unlikely that your area of operations would be placed under martial law until you are rooted out.
And here's the thing - the local populace will WELCOME the martial law, because you as terrorists and bombers are threats to life, limb and security and so are the BAD GUYS.
If you instead choose to sieze a government seat and take a stand, you probably will still be labelled as terrorists, but your information operations campaign has a much better position because at least you aren't blowing people up. You will probably create a standoff, as you hole up in whatever institution you have captured while security forces surround you. Assuming you aren't so stupid as to keep or kill hostages, you should have an opportunity to get your message out while the powers that be discuss what to do with you.
Odds are they will not attempt to flush you out right away, as everybody prefers a non-violent solution, and Waco is very much on the minds of security force planners nowadays. Instead, they just wait you out. ...unless you go on the offensive, at which point you will be smashed flat - to the cheers of your fellow Americans who like to see the forces of law and order triumph over wackos and nutjobs - especially if you killed a policeman or soldier in the process.
Remember: you are ARMED. Shooting at you isn't the same as firing into a group of quietly protesting civillians or random bystanders. By arming yourselves, you make yourselves combatants.
There is no scenario in which you and your armed buddies come across as the good guys. At worst, you are terrorists; at best, misguided nutjobs.
The only time when it doesn't matter how you are percieved is when you are capable of exerting enough force to win through main strength - and if you try that, you are hopelessly outgunned.
The bottom line here is that there is no way in modern times to effect overthrow of the US Govenrment through armed insurrection. Can't happen. And that makes the 2cd Amendment pointless.
DG
Canadian, thanks.
I retired from racing cars a few years ago.
DG
And what you (and many others; you're in good company) keep overlooking is that A COUNTRY FACING ARMED INSURRECTION FROM ITS OWN PEOPLE CANNOT QUIT AND GO HOME.
That is doubly true when the insurgents don't have widespread popular support, and when there are pervasive and effective security forces (police and military) operating throughout the state.
The Cuba example fails that test, as the Cuban security forces were niether pervasive nor effective, and where the rebels had popular support.
Faced with the succession of the South, the US chose to go to war with its own people. Not only did it do so, it WON - in the face of the worst casulties ever faced by the American people. THAT is the model here, not foreign occupiers of remote countries, nor tiny countries with little security infrastructure or government.
DG
You overestimate the vulnerability of equipment to EMP.
And you underestimate the ability of armed force to intimidate a population, especially when that armed force wears the uniform of legitimate (if not necessarily moral) authority.
Let's say you form a citzen millitia. Let's say you get as much as a battalion's worth of fighters. Let's say you occupy a rural town, and declare it free of the evil influence of the federal and state governments.
When the National Guard (who, poor cousins to the real army that they may be, are still far better equipped than your rebel force can ever dream) move to retake the town, who do you think the rest of the country will be cheering for?
Will Fox News be rooting for the defeat of the National Guard?
We're not talking about the Army firing into a crowd of peaceful protesters here; we're talking about an armed insurrection on US soil. How are you going to mobilize the masses when you are the bad guys?
DG
Young? I think I'm probably older than you are. 21 years in the Army, and still going, thanks.
Those lessons you are talking about with regards to asymmetrical warfare don't apply in the case of the second amendment, because it is safe to assume that the US Army would be free to smash any home-grown insurgants flat, without regard to collateral damage, because the battle-front and the home-front would be one and the same.
This is unlike every example you cited, including your own American Revolution, because in every one of those examples, the "pro" army was fighting on foreign soil and could afford to quit.
As soon as you know the enemy *can* quit, then yes, you can keep plugging away with raids and ambushes, inflicting what casulties you can, and refusing to give open battle to a superior force - until the day when they finally cross whatever threshold triggers the decision to give up and go home.
Sometimes that threshold is high - Soviets in Afghanistan, US in Vietnam. Sometimes it is much lower - US in Somalia.
But none of this applies in a "US vs US" conflict. The American government would pull no punches in an armed insurrection on American soil. That has already been demonstrated, in the American Civil War.
If you have American rebels attempting to overthrow the US government, then the government cannot afford to quit. Where can it go? It has to fight to win, and clean up the mess afterwards. That group of rebels would be facing the raw, unadulterated might of the American military machine, and it would not survive the encounter.
That being the case, the Second Amendment is toothless. Your right to own an M16 varient will do you no good whatsever against a single tank, never mind an amroured division.
DG
DISCLAIMER: I am posting from Kandahar City, Afghanistan, where I am stationed for the next little while.
The example you cite - the American Revolution - hasn't been applicable to the real world since the last years of the American Civil War.
The time period from the early 1700s to the late 1800s was dominated by the smoothbore, muzzle-loading musket, and its big brother, the smoothbore, muzzle-loading, solid-shot cannon (of which there were few in the Colonies)
An American Rebel, armed with a flintlock Kentucky Rifle, carried a weapon that was the technological equal of his British Regular Army counterpart. In some ways (range and accuracy) it was superior; in others (rate of fire) inferior. Employed properly, entirely comparable.
The success of armies in this era was largely a function of discipline, leadership, and logistics. If you had a cause sufficient to unite men in common purpose, leaders with enough tactical acumen to employ them, and paid attention to the problems of supply, it was entirely possible to go head to head with a national, professional, regular army and win outright on the battlefield - especially if your "professional" opponent was lacking in one of these vital areas.
That is no longer the case. No militia is capable of withstanding the kind of destructive force a modern combat team (a company of mechanized infantry, a troop of tanks, and two artillery pieces) is capable of putting out.
The insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan die - in large numbers - any time they try to go toe-to-toe with modern combat forces. It's no contest; so hopelessly lopsided that it's almost pathetic.
The only weapon that is at all effective is the Improvised Explosive Device (basically a really big land mine) but the IED is not a decisive weapon; it is a harassment tactic, not a war-winner.
The insurgent plays off our unwillingness to inflict civillian casulties. If we take fire from a village, it is entirely within our combat power to stop the entire village flat (in seconds!) to get him. We choose not to for very good reasons.
But if a government WERE willing to inflict those kinds of casulties (and please note that I am NOT advocating such a course of action) any would-be rebels would find themselves in a world of hurt very quickly. The idea that a self-organized citizen militia could take on and defeat the US Army, Navy, and Air Force is simply laughable.
Yes, the North Vietnamese pulled it off, but that was because the will to do what was necessary to win wasn't there. Within the boundaries of the United States proper, however, it is safe to say that will exists, given that the army that has killed more Americans than all other armies in all other American wars *combined* is the US Army. Ask Lincoln and Grant if they had the will to do what was necessary to win. or better yet, ask Lee.
Your Second Amendment is nice in theory. In practice, it is a paper tiger.
DG
Back in the 80s, when Bloom County was at its height, I had a paper route delivering the Vancouver Sun - which, naturally, ran Bloom County as one of its regular strips.
The highlight of Saturday was reading the color strips - and I distinctly remember "Pear pimples for hairy fishnuts? - Just hand the dough over Mac!" incapacitating me for almost half an hour. Every time I thought I had the laughter under control, it'd hit me again, and the giggles would recommence.
OK, so I was like 14 years old and easily amused. But still... quite possibly Funniest Strip Ever.
I still have a large collection of original 80s vintage Bloom County strips saved in a filing cabinet at home.
Yes, Outland and Opus were a little bitterer; a little less fun than the halycon Bloom County days, but Breathed never lost his genius. The Outland strip "Perhaps you had better reassess what gives your lives meaning" strip is as good as any Bloom County work.
I'm sad to see Opus waddle off into the sunset... especially because I think he means it this time.
DG
Slashdot ate my diagram.
"Left Arrow" Passing Side | Suicide "Right Arrow"
DG