(no subject)

[dr_tectonic]

So, Happy Birthday to the mid-terming monkey! (As of Tuesday, but since he's study-study-study man all week, it's a good thing we did all the celebrating last weekend.) G&C on Saturday for Jerry and Thomas's birthdays. Dinner with Mel on Sunday.

It snowed today. It was 70 yesterday. It's supposed to be 50 tomorrow.

Lots of not getting to bed early enough for me, but I also got a bunch of work done on the R project this week, so I'm feeling satisfied. This month will mostly about writing a grant proposal, UGH BLEAH GLEARGH.

Saw a couple of interesting talks yesterday, the upshot of which is basically: having the military deal with natural disasters is a horrible idea. And sensationalism in news reporting has evil, evil effects, so if you watch CNN or Fox News, or hell, any kind of TV news reporting, please stop. I'm serious. It literally kills people. And if you're watching, you're contributing to the problem.

Feeling kind of scattershot. Buh?

Why aren't I in bed?

Comments

Re: Change?

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

But this assumes that people who can handle crises are also good ones to learn lessons from one crisis that apply to how other people should handle subsequent ones. Why would that necessarily be true?

And shouldn't people with these skills who are trained in military goals be finding Osama bin Laden or something like that? [I'm only partly being flip. This just feels way too Stand on Zanzibar or The Sheep Look Up for me.]

Re: Change?

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

There's an unwritten law somewhere requiring 2 hours of cheetos and first-person shootemups before lifelong civilians like you and me get to engage in second guessing special forces officers. So I'll try to be brief. There are mundane crises, which people handle because they've either handled them before or because they've drilled and drilled and drilled beforehand. Then there are crises where drilling is futile. That's when special forces get involved. If their afteraction reports prove useful to conventional units, they'll move to other things.

As for ObL, them Spec Ops troops have been operating along the Durand Line for what, 5 years? By now they've probably all been photographed from a distance, and are thus best not sent on get-in,get-on-with-it,get-it-over-with-and-get-out missions to Waziristan.