Ben De Bono and Matt Anderson sent me down a rabbit hole.
During the waning months of my time in the Middle East, I was stuck in a back office with about fourteen or fifteen hours of time to kill each day. I've been a fan of podcasts since I was first able to listen to them in mid-2007, and I decided to use that time to find a few new podcasts. Highlights included The History Chicks, The Faroe Islands Podcast, and The Sci-Fi Christian. I sort of keep up on all of these as I'm able. Last night, when I was checking my RSS feeds for new podcasts, I saw that The Sci-Fi Christian - which I probably hadn't listened to in over a year - had done an episode on one of my old favorites, Dune. I need to give it another listen, but it was really interesting to see some of the comparisons with Star Wars, and also with Lawrence of Arabia.
That got me to thinking: are there any other podcasts about Dune? What about one of my other favorites, Starship Troopers? So, I did some looking, and I found a bunch of stuff. Take Me To Your Reader had De-Bounced (Starship Troopers). The Sci Phi Show, which discusses science fiction and philosophy, has two episodes: Starship Troopers: When is it ok to go to war? Part 1, and Starship Troopers: How to fight a war? Part 2. I decided to listen to TMTYR's episode on Contact, and one of the guys mentioned the Sci-Fi Movie Podcast, so I checked their website, and they have a podcast about Starship Troopers and, finally, a podcast about Dune.
So... As if I didn't have enough to listen to already, I now have more!
Thursday 8 October 2015
Thursday 24 September 2015
Future Reading: Dhofar Rebellion
Future Reading: The Dhofar Rebellion As I've noted in detail elsewhere, I've spent much of the last four years - and most of my time in Aberdeen - working to become one of the world's foremost leading experts in a forgotten 1970's counterinsurgency campaign. I'm currently (sporadically) working on OGHAP, and that's going to require me to read (or reread) The Gordon Highlanders: A Concise History and Life of a Regiment, Volume 4. Once I finish my manuscript, I'll start work on a book about Dhofar. That's going to require me to read some books that I have yet to get to.
More to come.
Wednesday 16 September 2015
Future Reading: Leisure
As much time as I try to spend my time on professional or academic reading of one sort or another, I occasionally introduce something recreational into the mix - The Martian, to name but one. Here are some of the medium-term leisure reading options I've identified thus far.
More to come.
Tuesday 15 September 2015
Future Reading: Faith and Philosophy
It's time for another installment of my long-term reading list. While I was living in Hampton Roads, Virginia a few years ago, I went through a phase when I was doing pretty well at reading a chapter from the Bible, a few prayers from the Book of Common Prayer, and another book on faith or philosophy. Those included Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, Confessions by St. Augustine, and - unfortunately - Gifts of the Jews by Thomas Cahill. At some point in the foreseeable future, I hope to get back into that habit.
Over the Summer, Lady Jaye (who is Catholic) and I (who, like C.S. Lewis, am Anglican) visited the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and I walked away with a copy of C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church by Joseph Pearce. I've started reading it, so this will probably the first one I'll read. Aside from that, I was assigned a number of books in a couple of my undergraduate history courses that focused on the relationship between science and religion. Those courses were pretty seminal for me, but I didn't have a chance to read most of the assigned textbooks, so I'd like to read the following texts at some point in the next couple of years: Christian Apologetics by Norman L. Geisler; The Galileo Connection by Charles E. Hummel; Reason in the Balance by Phillip E. Johnson; Science & its Limits by Del Ratzsch; and Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction, edited by Gary B. Ferngren. I'd also like to throw in some history, such as The Dead Sea Scrolls by Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook; History of the Church by Eusebius; or Antiquities of the Jews and The Jewish Wars by Flavius Josephus. I may also include a bit more Lewis (maybe a reread of Mere Christianity, or a reading of The Great Divorce?), but that's yet to be determined.
More to come.
Sunday 13 September 2015
Great War Podcasts, Part 6: KCL WSD
It's been a long time since I posted some podcasts about the First World War. In the last few months, the Department of War Studies at King's College London has had a couple of good ones. The first is an interview with William Philpott about his book War of Attrition: Fighting the First World War. The second is more recent, and it features several speakers discussing the sideshows of the Great War - a topic which was also covered in an excellent podcast that I've linked to previously. Go check 'em out!
Thursday 10 September 2015
Future Reading: Strategic Studies
In early July, I posted about my potential 2016 reading goals. I've spent some time identifying categories of books that I want to read over the next few years, so I'll handle these various categories in a series of upcoming posts, starting with strategy.
As I've discussed in great detail, I spent some of 2012 and all of 2013 in Scotland and received my Master of Science (with Distinction) in Strategic Studies from the University of Aberdeen. I've always been interested in military topics, and that course of study helped me to simultaneously expand and focus that interest. While I ready very voraciously before, during, and after my courses of instruction, there were a handful of books I never got around to reading. There are a few more that I'd like to reread. Other books have come up either before or since that course of study. They're listed (and annotated) below.
More to come.
Wednesday 12 August 2015
OGHAP: The Epic Great War Timeline
Initially, I was only tracking the dates, events, and which of the aforementioned categories they fell into. As I began researching the early battles on the Western Front, I tried to categorize engagements that were subsets of the Battle of the Frontiers, the Great Retreat, the Race to the Sea. As the list began to balloon in scope, the data quickly became prohibitively unruly, so I decided to organize it - and if I was going to reorganize it, I might as well expand it, right? I re-coded the dates into a "YYYY//MM//DD" format for easier chronological sorting. I also added some additional categories: theater; campaign; whether the military events are ground, naval, or amphibious in nature; and whether the British Expeditionary Force, British Imperial Forces, or neither took place in the engagement. Where relevant, I also track the Wikipedia entry for a given event or topic - I know, boo, hiss, Wikipedia, but it can be useful if you know what you're doing.
Having initially kept the timeline in my .txt manuscript, the expansion made it too unruly for that format. Porting it over into Excel has made the it much easier to manage the data, and Excel allows me to manipulate that data so that I can clump it together for easier use. It ended up being a massive undertaking, and it's still not complete, but I consider it an investment of time that will ultimately make my effort to document the war more efficient in the long run. I can also take pride in the fact that I've amalgamated a variety of sources to create a fairly authoritative timeline of the conflict. Maybe it will have some use beyond OGHAP? Only time will tell.
Tuesday 28 July 2015
OGHAP: Primary Sources
Medal index cards are often the only remaining official record of a particular soldier's service. (Most First World War personnel service records were destroyed in the Blitz.) My contact in Orkney has diligently assisted me in identifying and procuring the medal cards for the soldiers in question. A few months ago, the BBC published this guide, which includes a guide to reading a medal card. These documents have been extremely valuable in establishing or confirming some basic facts about the various Orcadian Gordon Highlanders.
Earlier this year, I discussed my efforts to procure soldiers' wills for seven Great War Orcadian Gordon Highlanders from the National Archives of Scotland. Since I wrote that post, my contact back in Orkney discovered several additional Orcadian Gordon Highlanders, and one has a will. My good buddy, CN Constable, has agreed to get it for me since the last effort took about a month and cost far more than it needed to.
The United Kingdom's National Archives (known colloquially as "Kew") are releasing and/or digitizing many documents for the Great War's centenary. One such effort is Operation War Diary, about which I learned a couple of months ago from one of War on the Rocks' (W)archives posts. (Here's more information about Operation War Diary.) Since information about many of the Orcadian Gordons is so sparse, I thought that this might be a good way to find information about the various battalions of the Gordon Highlanders, and possibly even about individual Orcadian Gordon Highlanders from my own roster. I put off participating in OWD until I had some time, at which point I discovered that none of the diaries available for tagging pertain to the Gordon Highlanders. However, Kew has a total of thirty-eight individual war diaries, ranging in length from about twelve pages to nearly six hundred. I expect to procure these records in the near future. The National Archives has a good webinar (also available, albeit less illustrative, as a podcast) about how to search for and correlate the various documents available in the archives for the purposes of historical research. I'm not sure I'll have need for more than medal cards and war diaries, but it might be interesting to see what additional resources might be available to allow me to continue researching this and related topics in the future.
I've worked with primary sources before, but this has been my first opportunity to do much archival history. I have to say, I'm really enjoying it, and once I get the book published I may see if my undergraduate alma mater might be interested in having me out to lecture about my experiences doing historical research outside of academia.
Saturday 4 July 2015
Reading in 2015: Mid-Year Update
I recently posted about my progress on my 2015 reading goals. Since I'm doing so well in this endeavour, to the tune of probably exceeding my goals, I'm taking the next logical step by formulating insanely ambitious reading goals for subsequent years that I have no chance whatsoever of actually completing.
One author whose work I enjoyed in high school and college was the late Michael Crichton. Like many young people, I started with Jurassic Park, and continued with (in no particular order): Eaters of the Dead/The 13th Warrior, Congo, Sphere, Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Lost World, and Airframe. There are a number of Crichton's novels that I have yet to read, and I'd like to remedy that. I expect to forego the thrillers that the young Crichton wrote under the pseudonym "John Lange". That leaves some of his older works, and some of his later works: The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, The Great Train Robbery, Timeline, Prey, State of Fear, Next, Pirate Latitudes, and Micro.
That's nine books, and while it might be fun to follow the nine books I'm likely to read this year with nine books by a single author, I suspect that it would get monotonous, and I have other priorities to satisfy as well. So, what other categories am I considering?
Still in the leisure category, I also read a number of Ian Fleming's classic James Bond novels during and after my undergraduate years. I still have yet to read For Your Eyes Only, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, The Man With the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me, Thunderball, and You Only Live Twice. One of these, For Your Eyes Only, is a collection of short stories that was combined with Octopussy and The Living Daylights into Quantum of Solace in 2008, to coincide with the release of what may have been the worst Bond film ever made. I already read the latter collection around 2006, and I have the Quantum of Solace volume, so I'll just read those stories from that particular volume. Otherwise, I'll try to salt these into the mix along with the Crichton novels.
Aside from these two authors, I hope to read a few other books. One of these is Armor by John Steakley, which has been highly recommended to me for years, and which I attempted to read in 2014. Another is Animal Farm by George Orwell, which I also started reading years ago and only ever got a few pages into - maybe on a plane? I don't remember.
While I was in Scotland, I may have gotten about a quarter of the way into The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, and I'd love to finish it at some point. I've also spent years trying to get through the audiobook of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, and attempted to listen to Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island while on a road trip to the East Coast in 2014. Those may be good bedtime reading/listening projects for the winter months of 2015/'16.
As I continue to identify categories and books within those categories, I'll continue posting about it.
Saturday 20 June 2015
Reading in 2015 Update
We're nearly halfway through 2015, and I'm more than halfway through my goal of reading eight books in 2015. Thus far, I've finished five books: Cyber War Will Not Take Place by Thomas Rid, Warlords of Oman by P.S. Allfree, Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force by Robert M. Farley, and The Martian by Andy Weir, Churchill's First War: Young Winston at War with the Afghans by Con Coughlin. I started the first couple of books in 2014, so I should probably read a ninth book just for good measure.
The remaining books on my 2015 list are Bleeding Talent: How the US Military Mismanages Great Leaders and Why It's Time for a Revolution by Tim Kane, Bomb: The Race to Build--and Steal--the World's Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin, and Tower of the Sun: Stories From the Middle East and North Africa by Michael Totten. That would put me up to eight. However, there may be a couple of changes. The original plan was to read Sheinkin's book with Lady Jaye as part of a program at her school, but we never got around to reading it during the school year, so it may get shelved for the time being. I also began reading The Devil's Sandbox: With the 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry at War in Iraq by John Bruning during a recent trip. I've intended to read this for about a decade, I've had it on my Kindle for two years, and I'm finally getting around to reading it. I retain the hope of finishing On War by Carl von Clausewitz and The Design and Evaluation of Physical Protection Systems by Mary Lynn Garcia this year. Other potential supplements include The Story of the Malakand Field Force by Winston Churchill (as a follow-up to Coughlin's book), and Where the West Ends by Michael Totten (as a supplement to Tower of the Sun).
I typically underperform on this particular goal, but being more than halfway through with around half of the year yet to go is encouraging.
The remaining books on my 2015 list are Bleeding Talent: How the US Military Mismanages Great Leaders and Why It's Time for a Revolution by Tim Kane, Bomb: The Race to Build--and Steal--the World's Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin, and Tower of the Sun: Stories From the Middle East and North Africa by Michael Totten. That would put me up to eight. However, there may be a couple of changes. The original plan was to read Sheinkin's book with Lady Jaye as part of a program at her school, but we never got around to reading it during the school year, so it may get shelved for the time being. I also began reading The Devil's Sandbox: With the 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry at War in Iraq by John Bruning during a recent trip. I've intended to read this for about a decade, I've had it on my Kindle for two years, and I'm finally getting around to reading it. I retain the hope of finishing On War by Carl von Clausewitz and The Design and Evaluation of Physical Protection Systems by Mary Lynn Garcia this year. Other potential supplements include The Story of the Malakand Field Force by Winston Churchill (as a follow-up to Coughlin's book), and Where the West Ends by Michael Totten (as a supplement to Tower of the Sun).
I typically underperform on this particular goal, but being more than halfway through with around half of the year yet to go is encouraging.
Saturday 6 June 2015
Saturday 2 May 2015
Saloons in the Gulf
A couple of weeks ago, I saw an article in the Kuwait Times entitled When a Saloon Isn't. As the author rightly notes:
When I lived in the Gulf, I also frequented a local "saloon", and went in on most of my days off to get my head shaved and my beard trimmed. Most of my favorite memories of my time in the Gulf are of being in that barber's chair, while some Pakistani guy with whom I could barely communicate held a blade to my scalp or my throat. (If we're being quite honest, that took some getting used to, but it was a pretty good experience for me.) Being able to read Arabic myself, I eventually got a good enough look at the little wood carving, but didn't know what it meant. So, when I saw the article, I was naturally intrigued. When you zoom in on the wood carving, you can see that it reads:
That's "صالون الفطيم", or "Saloon al Futtaim". As far as I can tell from some casual Googling, "al Futtaim" is a family name, but Wikipedia, the undisputed source of all knowledge, confirms that "saloon" is the South Asian word for a barber shop, potentially derived from the French "salon" or "sala". Isn't it interesting what you find out several years after the fact?
UPDATE: The Kuwait Times published another article about barber shops on Friday.
The word ‘saloon’ to an American immediately conjures up images of the Old West, of John Wayne movies and gun fights at the OK Corral. Watch any of the Hollywood Westerns from the 1950s and 1960s and you will see the word ‘saloon’ flash across the screen each time Gary Cooper or Clint Eastwood walked into a bar. Saloons have a very rough, low reputation. They are the places where cowboys caroused, swilled beer and mingled with saloon girls (aka prostitutes).
So it’s ironic whenever an American arrives in Kuwait that they find saloons on almost every corner - but not a drop of legal alcohol to drink.
That's "صالون الفطيم", or "Saloon al Futtaim". As far as I can tell from some casual Googling, "al Futtaim" is a family name, but Wikipedia, the undisputed source of all knowledge, confirms that "saloon" is the South Asian word for a barber shop, potentially derived from the French "salon" or "sala". Isn't it interesting what you find out several years after the fact?
UPDATE: The Kuwait Times published another article about barber shops on Friday.
Sunday 22 February 2015
Internet Research, Then and Now
A few mornings ago, on my way to work, I was thinking about just how far the Internet has come. I was one of the early users of the Internet, not when it was still brand new, but just before it started to become popular. In the United States, home Internet access started being proliferated around 1995/'96, but it was still a few years before most homes had it (I think my family got connected in early 1997). When I got to college, the Internet had become pretty mainstream, but the available resources were a tiny fraction of what we enjoy today, and you didn't have the sort of quality control that we now sort of take for granted...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFBDn5PiL00
Anyway, I did a lot of my research on the Internet, even back when most professors (particularly my history professors) were still pushing students to use books and articles from "scholarly journals", the former of which were difficult to get a hold of, and the latter of which were nearly impossible to identify and procure. I remember writing a research paper for one particular course, and being gently hounded by the good-natured but skeptical professor. Ironically, he's been one of the department members who's come to embrace the online format for his curricula, but at the time he was very reticent to accept work that relied on Internet resources. In particular, I remember him being extremely suspicious of an article I'd used as a source (Roman Ireland: What did the Romans ever do for us?, Damien DeBarra, 27th July 2002) because it was "from a site called 'Blather net'". It actually ended up being a pretty critical resource, particularly because it pointed me to other articles by distinguished scholars whom the author, having worked at the archaeology museum of the National Museum of Ireland, had been intimately acquainted with.
Fast forward to 2013, and very nearly all of my postgraduate research was conducted online. I read a few traditional textbooks, particularly before leaving the States for Aberdeen; and I got a handful of hard copy books that were out of print and unavailable online to use as sources in my dissertation; but aside from that, the vast majority of my research for my four courses and my dissertation was done online. I used some of these techniques to achieve great success. I got news and journal articles online, I raided multiple document repositories for (publicly available) official and academic sources, I incorporated tons of news stories. And, of course, my advisor didn't bat an eye.
I don't suppose I have a real point, aside from reminiscing about how revolutionary the information revolution actually is.
Fast forward to 2013, and very nearly all of my postgraduate research was conducted online. I read a few traditional textbooks, particularly before leaving the States for Aberdeen; and I got a handful of hard copy books that were out of print and unavailable online to use as sources in my dissertation; but aside from that, the vast majority of my research for my four courses and my dissertation was done online. I used some of these techniques to achieve great success. I got news and journal articles online, I raided multiple document repositories for (publicly available) official and academic sources, I incorporated tons of news stories. And, of course, my advisor didn't bat an eye.
I don't suppose I have a real point, aside from reminiscing about how revolutionary the information revolution actually is.
Thursday 19 February 2015
Thoughts on "Non-Monogamy" and Improving Marriage
So, there's this guy named Chris Messina. He's some sort of tech entrepeneur - Wikipedia describes him as an "open source advocate" - and he resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. I've only recently become aware of him, which I'll get into momentarily.
As I've aged, my personal views haven't changed substantially, but I've gotten consistently better at considering and tolerating the views of folks whose views are significantly different than my own. Chris Messina really strains my ability to do so. First, his claim to fame is popularizing the hashtag. While I recognize the technical ingenuity of hashtags, I'm pretty ambivalent about the net benefits of hashtags specifically and Twitter generally. Messina has recently gained additional media attention by discussing another topic that sort of makes me wince: his decision to eschew monogamy. In his recent op-ed at CNN, Messina says:
Messina's argument is essentially as follows:
Marriage is failing for fifty percent of Americans. As a result, either marriage needs to be fixed, or an alternative needs to be offered.
"Monogamy established itself thousands of years ago, when society was ruled by scarcity and resources and potential mates were in limited supply."
"'[O]pen relationships'... are merely rational economic responses to excess inventory and changing expectations of romance. Viewed in this context, conventional monogamy is getting long in the tooth."
That last item is the crux of his argument: because resource scarcity is no longer a significant motivator of monogamy, and because information technology has altered the supply/demand balance with respect to locating potential sexual/romantic/domestic partners, open (or non-monogamous, or "monogamish") relationships are a viable option.
I think I understand where Messina is coming from, though I don't agree with him. And beyond disagreeing with him, I think there are some fundamental flaws in his logic which, at the very least, are worthy of consideration should the debate on "non-monogamy" or "monogamish" or polyamorous relationships continue.
First and foremost, Messina's premise rests upon a demonstrably false, yet culturally pervasive, myth: fifty percent of American marriages do not fail. I actually saw Messina address this criticism by someone else in a comment thread, and he made the entirely legitimate observation that the actual divorce rate (somewhere in the mid- to high-thirtieth percentile) is still problematic. However, he seems to be extremely focused on this idea of jumping to an alternative, rather than the alternative: acknowledging the reasons why marriage remains the best option, identifying the reasons why its effectiveness has declined (albeit marginally) in recent decades, and providing solutions to address those challenges. (Without going off on a tangent, I feel like conservatives are always trying to make the case that progressive policies have undermined marriage, and progressives seem reticent to even consider those arguments.) In that quote above, Messina talks about being "solution-oriented", but from where I sit, Messina hasn't actually identified the root cause of the problem, nor has he provided a solution to that problem; instead, he's tried to dodge the problem entirely.
To put this into risk management terms, those of us in the security field are fond of pointing out that you can manage risk, you can mitigate risk, you can transfer risk, sometimes you can even avoid risk, but you can't eliminate it. Messina's solution of just avoiding monogamy altogether would seem to be an attempt at risk avoidance or, potentially, risk transference, but it doesn't seem to actually manage or mitigate the risks. And, in so doing, Messina is eschewing the benefits of monogamy generally, and marriage specifically. If I'm right, then I'm not sure how Messina's philosophy actually passes a cost/benefit analysis.
That brings me to my next point: Messina's history isn't accurate. Messina claims that "monogamy established itself thousands of years ago, when society was ruled by scarcity and resources and potential mates were in limited supply"; but, in fact, periods of limited supply have often driven polygamy and other forms of polyamory. For example, it's frequently provided as one of the justifications for why the Mormons practiced polygamy for several decades before abolishing the practice in the late 1800's. Messina's historical error is consistent with the prevailing view of social progress, but I've been far more frequently impressed with the adage from Ecclesiastes that "there is nothing new under the sun" - as a practicing historian, I can say with a great deal of consequence that the line from Ecclesiastes is a lot more verifiable. In so doing, he makes a common mistake: he assumes that monogamy/marriage's historical popularity is not a function of its historical success. There's a fine line between questioning authority and tradition, and assuming falsely that they are automatically wrong. Beyond being based upon a skewed view of history, his philosophy seems to focus entirely on a flawed perception of historical economics, while ignoring (or at least omitting) other benefits of monogamy/marriage from other disciplines such as psychology, sociology, law, and even more contemporary economics.
I also take some issue with one of Messina's opening observations:
For anyone who can't watch the video, here's the money quote:
I doubt that anyone told Messina that monogamy/marriage was effortless, but if someone ever did, they were doing him a great disservice. Monogamy isn't easy, and neither is marriage. However, I've always thought that the case for why they were preferable to the alternatives were pretty compelling. For these reasons, I've always been very keen to frame my relationship with Lady Jaye as being part of a team: we work together, we triumph together, we work to overcome challenges together, and although we could (and did) function adequately as individuals, we co-opt the opposition campaign's motto from the Scottish secession referendum by saying that we're "better together".
Ultimately, while I acknowledge that Messina (and my friend, and anyone else for that matter) has the right to choose whatever lifestyle they think suits them best, I'm underwhelmed by the intellectual case that Messina has presented to support his relationship philosophy. That said, I think that one point that he makes can be spun a bit to make a relevant point. Messina says:
As skeptical as I've been of the case that Messina makes for "non-monogamy", I wish both him and my friend happiness and success. And, although I'd have previously wished misfortune to befall Messina as karma for having introduced hashtagging to the masses, I'd be interested to do a point-counterpoint with him on this topic (though I suspect that I would be too busy to actually do that, and that he would also have other endeavours consuming his time).
As I've aged, my personal views haven't changed substantially, but I've gotten consistently better at considering and tolerating the views of folks whose views are significantly different than my own. Chris Messina really strains my ability to do so. First, his claim to fame is popularizing the hashtag. While I recognize the technical ingenuity of hashtags, I'm pretty ambivalent about the net benefits of hashtags specifically and Twitter generally. Messina has recently gained additional media attention by discussing another topic that sort of makes me wince: his decision to eschew monogamy. In his recent op-ed at CNN, Messina says:
"But as a child of divorce and an aspiring designer-entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, I was suspicious of marriage. Out here, we're data-positive and solution-oriented and if your product (i.e. marriage) is failing for 50% of your customers, then you need to fix it or offer something better."Messina has written previously about his preference for open relationships. I only came across his recent article in the first place by an odd twist of fate: his current girlfriend happens to be an acquaintance of mine, and she has posted and discussed the article and their relationship online. Otherwise, my sole exposure to Messina's views would have been through a recent segment on the Michael Medved Show, in which guest host Mark Davis was less gracious about Messina's column and views than Medved tends to be. My exposure by way of my friend gave me more reason to be invested in Messina's views, as well as reason to consider them in more detail than I would have otherwise.
Messina's argument is essentially as follows:
That last item is the crux of his argument: because resource scarcity is no longer a significant motivator of monogamy, and because information technology has altered the supply/demand balance with respect to locating potential sexual/romantic/domestic partners, open (or non-monogamous, or "monogamish") relationships are a viable option.
I think I understand where Messina is coming from, though I don't agree with him. And beyond disagreeing with him, I think there are some fundamental flaws in his logic which, at the very least, are worthy of consideration should the debate on "non-monogamy" or "monogamish" or polyamorous relationships continue.
First and foremost, Messina's premise rests upon a demonstrably false, yet culturally pervasive, myth: fifty percent of American marriages do not fail. I actually saw Messina address this criticism by someone else in a comment thread, and he made the entirely legitimate observation that the actual divorce rate (somewhere in the mid- to high-thirtieth percentile) is still problematic. However, he seems to be extremely focused on this idea of jumping to an alternative, rather than the alternative: acknowledging the reasons why marriage remains the best option, identifying the reasons why its effectiveness has declined (albeit marginally) in recent decades, and providing solutions to address those challenges. (Without going off on a tangent, I feel like conservatives are always trying to make the case that progressive policies have undermined marriage, and progressives seem reticent to even consider those arguments.) In that quote above, Messina talks about being "solution-oriented", but from where I sit, Messina hasn't actually identified the root cause of the problem, nor has he provided a solution to that problem; instead, he's tried to dodge the problem entirely.
To put this into risk management terms, those of us in the security field are fond of pointing out that you can manage risk, you can mitigate risk, you can transfer risk, sometimes you can even avoid risk, but you can't eliminate it. Messina's solution of just avoiding monogamy altogether would seem to be an attempt at risk avoidance or, potentially, risk transference, but it doesn't seem to actually manage or mitigate the risks. And, in so doing, Messina is eschewing the benefits of monogamy generally, and marriage specifically. If I'm right, then I'm not sure how Messina's philosophy actually passes a cost/benefit analysis.
That brings me to my next point: Messina's history isn't accurate. Messina claims that "monogamy established itself thousands of years ago, when society was ruled by scarcity and resources and potential mates were in limited supply"; but, in fact, periods of limited supply have often driven polygamy and other forms of polyamory. For example, it's frequently provided as one of the justifications for why the Mormons practiced polygamy for several decades before abolishing the practice in the late 1800's. Messina's historical error is consistent with the prevailing view of social progress, but I've been far more frequently impressed with the adage from Ecclesiastes that "there is nothing new under the sun" - as a practicing historian, I can say with a great deal of consequence that the line from Ecclesiastes is a lot more verifiable. In so doing, he makes a common mistake: he assumes that monogamy/marriage's historical popularity is not a function of its historical success. There's a fine line between questioning authority and tradition, and assuming falsely that they are automatically wrong. Beyond being based upon a skewed view of history, his philosophy seems to focus entirely on a flawed perception of historical economics, while ignoring (or at least omitting) other benefits of monogamy/marriage from other disciplines such as psychology, sociology, law, and even more contemporary economics.
I also take some issue with one of Messina's opening observations:
Like most of my generation, I grew up spoon fed monogamist fairy tales that pushed "happily ever after" endings as though achieving one was preordained.I suppose that this is the version that a lot of popular culture presents. I differ with Messina's description of these as "monogamist fairy tales" - I think most of us know couples who have lived long, happy lives together, and who have weathered life's storms better because they had done so with a partner who was committed to sticking by them "for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health". And, in fact, the standard, cliche vows that most people take when getting married imply the truth that I suspect most of us, even Messina, have learned either by being told or through observation: that relationships, and especially marriages, are hard work. They require sacrifice, discipline, patience, and compromise, none of which are a "monogamist fairy tale". I'm reminded of an episode of Friends, The One Where Joey Tells Rachel, which features this exchange:
It was like, once you found "the one" and stepped on to the relationship escalator, all the answers became clear -- so long as you kept your eyes on the prize and didn't stray (wait, what was the prize again?). You could spend your whole life living out this fantasy, blissfully ignorant that any other way might be possible, let alone desirable.
Monica: I don’t believe in soul mates either.I'm also reminded of an old discussion featuring economist Thomas Sowell:
Chandler: You don’t?
Monica: No. I don’t think that you and I were destined to end up together. I think that we fell in love and work hard at our relationship. Some days we work really hard.
For anyone who can't watch the video, here's the money quote:
"Married men get an extra bonus because their wives take care of many things and enable them to put more time into their careers."Now, Sowell participated in that discussion many years ago, so let's extrapolate it to a more contemporary setting: married men and married women get an extra bonus because they work together to take care of many things that enable both husband and wife to put more time into their careers.
I doubt that anyone told Messina that monogamy/marriage was effortless, but if someone ever did, they were doing him a great disservice. Monogamy isn't easy, and neither is marriage. However, I've always thought that the case for why they were preferable to the alternatives were pretty compelling. For these reasons, I've always been very keen to frame my relationship with Lady Jaye as being part of a team: we work together, we triumph together, we work to overcome challenges together, and although we could (and did) function adequately as individuals, we co-opt the opposition campaign's motto from the Scottish secession referendum by saying that we're "better together".
Ultimately, while I acknowledge that Messina (and my friend, and anyone else for that matter) has the right to choose whatever lifestyle they think suits them best, I'm underwhelmed by the intellectual case that Messina has presented to support his relationship philosophy. That said, I think that one point that he makes can be spun a bit to make a relevant point. Messina says:
We're now living in a period of great (though unequally distributed) abundance where our basic needs are sufficiently met, and reproduction is a choice. As a result, the reasons to be with a single mate for life are less urgent. And with the advent of connected mobile devices and the internet, we've entered into the era I've dubbed Big Dating.Messina is right that since most folks' basic needs are sufficiently met, the pressure to marry young is much less urgent than it once was, though I don't believe that this extends to less urgency to mate for life. I'm skeptical of his conception of "Big Dating", but what "the advent of connected mobile devices and the Internet" has altered is the scope of the supply. Demand remains essentially the same: with few exceptions, nearly everyone wants someone to have and to hold, and most people recognize the benefits of monogamy relative to its costs. However, the information revolution offers unprecedented access to the supply of potential mates. The Internet has made prospective mates easier to find, and with a much higher degree of selectivity. It's enabled people to maintain relationships which would have been difficult or impossible to maintain under earlier circumstances. I can say with some confidence that it's played a fundamental role in my relationship with Lady Jaye, and judging from twenty years of news stories, we're certainly not alone.
As skeptical as I've been of the case that Messina makes for "non-monogamy", I wish both him and my friend happiness and success. And, although I'd have previously wished misfortune to befall Messina as karma for having introduced hashtagging to the masses, I'd be interested to do a point-counterpoint with him on this topic (though I suspect that I would be too busy to actually do that, and that he would also have other endeavours consuming his time).
Wednesday 11 February 2015
Pry my Kindle from my Cold Dead Hands
I've seen a number of articles in the last few months about the apparent dangers of E-readers.
The case against e-readers: Why reading paper books is better for your mind.
Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming, researchers say
Why you might want to ditch your e-reader and go back to printed books
Screen time 'harms teenagers' sleep'
As I alluded to in early January, most of the books I plan to read in 2015 are electronic editions. Don't get me wrong, I love traditional books, but at this phase of my life, some E-books are a better investment than their traditional editions. I've had to move, or sell, or just plain give so many books away in the last couple of years, and I've travelled so much, that E-books are pretty attractive to me. I also tend to read books that I want to be able to search later - for example, I searched for one single quote for months and months between around 2010 and 2013, and finally found it completely by accident while re-reading Robert Kaplan's Imperial Grunts on a whim - and my Kindle is fantastic for finding passages, whereas traditional books are borderline worthless for the same purpose. So, I'll probably continue using my Kindle on many occasions for the foreseeable future.
On a side note, I can't help but find it amusing that a newspaper which has been losing readership to the Internet and a state-operated media outlet with eroding market share are highlighting studies that say that you should avoid electronic screens.
As I alluded to in early January, most of the books I plan to read in 2015 are electronic editions. Don't get me wrong, I love traditional books, but at this phase of my life, some E-books are a better investment than their traditional editions. I've had to move, or sell, or just plain give so many books away in the last couple of years, and I've travelled so much, that E-books are pretty attractive to me. I also tend to read books that I want to be able to search later - for example, I searched for one single quote for months and months between around 2010 and 2013, and finally found it completely by accident while re-reading Robert Kaplan's Imperial Grunts on a whim - and my Kindle is fantastic for finding passages, whereas traditional books are borderline worthless for the same purpose. So, I'll probably continue using my Kindle on many occasions for the foreseeable future.
On a side note, I can't help but find it amusing that a newspaper which has been losing readership to the Internet and a state-operated media outlet with eroding market share are highlighting studies that say that you should avoid electronic screens.
Monday 2 February 2015
Operation Open Range Report: January 2015
I'm trying to pursue Operation Open Range with a vengeance in 2015. With January behind us, how did I do?
I met my reading goal by finishing Thomas Rid's Cyber War Will Not Take Place, but since I actually started reading it in early December before taking a long break, that accomplishment comes with a bit of an asterisk. I also read a few chapters of Mary Lynn Garcia's The Design and Evaluation of Physical Protection Systems in preparation for my Physical Security Professional exam later this year, but I should have made better progress. My goal for February is to finish reading P.S. Allfree's Warlords of Oman, as well as more chapters from Garcia. I don't think I'm as far through Warlords of Oman, which I also started reading before taking a long hiatus, so it should be a smaller asterisk at the end of February.
I got a bit of writing done, but again, not as much as I would have liked. I put in a couple of weekends doing some serious work on OGHAP, and started working on an article that I hope to submit to the Small Wars Journal some time this year. In February, that OGHAP work will continue in earnest, and I may try to take a few opportunities to continue sporadic work on that article.
I already mentioned that I'm slowly studying for my PSP. I also intend to read the U.S. Army's current physical security manual, which I'll also need to finish reading before I take my exam, and from which I may try to sneak a chapter here or there if end up with slack time at work. So, those few chapters in Garcia that I read in January count toward this, but I could have been more disciplined about it.
I'm also trying to make a much more concerted effort with my Arabic study this year. I did okay in my first week, and then not as good in all of the subsequent weeks. In February, I'll try to shift my agenda a bit and weasel time for Arabic throughout the day, rather than trying to leave time for it after work that inevitably ends up getting filled with exhausted Facebook browsing in lieu of productive work. (In February, I may be able to do a combination of the two.)
That leaves two categories: Physical Training (PT), and Tigerlily (my catch-all term for business development). PT is still To-Be-Determined for February, but in February I hope to start working on a sort of draft risk management field manual incorporating some of the skill sets I've developed over the years.If it's a bit warmer in my neck of the woods by late February than it was in December and January, I might be able to start getting a bit more exercise as well.
So, January left plenty of room for improvement, but February is going to be a great opportunity to implement some of those improvements.
I met my reading goal by finishing Thomas Rid's Cyber War Will Not Take Place, but since I actually started reading it in early December before taking a long break, that accomplishment comes with a bit of an asterisk. I also read a few chapters of Mary Lynn Garcia's The Design and Evaluation of Physical Protection Systems in preparation for my Physical Security Professional exam later this year, but I should have made better progress. My goal for February is to finish reading P.S. Allfree's Warlords of Oman, as well as more chapters from Garcia. I don't think I'm as far through Warlords of Oman, which I also started reading before taking a long hiatus, so it should be a smaller asterisk at the end of February.
I got a bit of writing done, but again, not as much as I would have liked. I put in a couple of weekends doing some serious work on OGHAP, and started working on an article that I hope to submit to the Small Wars Journal some time this year. In February, that OGHAP work will continue in earnest, and I may try to take a few opportunities to continue sporadic work on that article.
I already mentioned that I'm slowly studying for my PSP. I also intend to read the U.S. Army's current physical security manual, which I'll also need to finish reading before I take my exam, and from which I may try to sneak a chapter here or there if end up with slack time at work. So, those few chapters in Garcia that I read in January count toward this, but I could have been more disciplined about it.
I'm also trying to make a much more concerted effort with my Arabic study this year. I did okay in my first week, and then not as good in all of the subsequent weeks. In February, I'll try to shift my agenda a bit and weasel time for Arabic throughout the day, rather than trying to leave time for it after work that inevitably ends up getting filled with exhausted Facebook browsing in lieu of productive work. (In February, I may be able to do a combination of the two.)
That leaves two categories: Physical Training (PT), and Tigerlily (my catch-all term for business development). PT is still To-Be-Determined for February, but in February I hope to start working on a sort of draft risk management field manual incorporating some of the skill sets I've developed over the years.If it's a bit warmer in my neck of the woods by late February than it was in December and January, I might be able to start getting a bit more exercise as well.
So, January left plenty of room for improvement, but February is going to be a great opportunity to implement some of those improvements.
Saturday 31 January 2015
They Were Spies! Americans Season 3 is Upon Us
Anyway, Lady Jaye and I love The Americans. We love the drama, the suspense, and the excitement, plus I happen to have taken a course in Strategic Intelligence, so I'm keen on telling Lady Jaye about the history behind the drama. We started watching right around the time that I moved across the country, and we buzzed through the first couple of seasons in a matter of three or four months - not bad when many of those episodes had to be coordinated remotely to correspond to two significantly different schedules. The third season premiered last night, and we're extremely excited to start watching it.
Thursday 29 January 2015
That's "Qu'aiti", not "Kuwaiti"
In the process of researching this post, I made an interesting discovery. When I was writing my dissertation about the Dhofar Rebellion,
No, dear reader. No.
In fact, while researching that other blog post, I learned that there was a sultanate called Qu'aiti, which was one of the Protectorate of South Arabia's four constituent parts. When the Protectorate collapsed upon British withdrawal in 1967, the four tiny monarchies collapsed and were subsumed into South Yemen, and are now part of the Hadhramaut Governorate in the present day Republic of Yemen. In no way was this the State of Kuwait, famous since 1990 as the venue for Saddam Hussein's final episode of military adventurism.
Let it never be said that I don't admit when I'm wrong... Even when I technically never voiced this particular instance of inaccuracy in presumption.
"Muscat was in deplorable condition....I had seen what could be done in the Hadhramaut and in the Qu'aiti State in particular, with a revenue about one half of what the Sultan of Muscat drew in customs duties; yet here there were no medical services in the whole country. I made a tour soon after my arrival with an economic expert and a representative from the Development Division at the British Embassy in Beirut. The latter told the Sultan after the tour that, in twenty years experience of most of the countries of the Middle East, he had never seen a people so poverty stricken or so debilitated with disease capable of treatment and cure."[1]In the interest of full disclosure, while that quote is properly cited here, and was properly cited in my dissertation, I absolutely ripped the citation off from this 1985 paper for the Marine Corps Command and Staff College by Major John B. Meagher, and I feel like I found the same quotation in Tony Geraghty's Who Dares Wins: History of the Special Air Service (the 2002 edition is linked, but my copy is the 1983 edition). I thought to myself, "Of course! In the 1950's, Kuwait was still a poor backwater! It would have been a perfect contrast to Sultan Said's mismanagement of Oman!"
[1] Townsend, John; Oman, the Making of a Modern State; St. Martin's Press; New York; 1977; pp. 66
No, dear reader. No.
In fact, while researching that other blog post, I learned that there was a sultanate called Qu'aiti, which was one of the Protectorate of South Arabia's four constituent parts. When the Protectorate collapsed upon British withdrawal in 1967, the four tiny monarchies collapsed and were subsumed into South Yemen, and are now part of the Hadhramaut Governorate in the present day Republic of Yemen. In no way was this the State of Kuwait, famous since 1990 as the venue for Saddam Hussein's final episode of military adventurism.
Let it never be said that I don't admit when I'm wrong... Even when I technically never voiced this particular instance of inaccuracy in presumption.
Saturday 24 January 2015
Love > Always Being Right
Early this afternoon, I read an article by blogger Justin Ricklefs entitled 12 Lessons Learned In 12 Years Of Marriage. Ricklefs doesn't mention this directly, but as I was reading his thoughts, I was reminded of another concept that seems to be important in the relationships that I've observed in both the ones that succeed, and the ones that fail: love is more important than always being right.
I had some very dear friends a few years ago whose marriage had grown out of less-than-ideal circumstances, but they'd been together for years, and were married for a long time. Their marriage eventually failed, and while I think both of them were at fault, I think the fault was moreso with the husband: he was more concerned with being right about what he thought were bedrock principles than he was with being the loving husband his wife needed. (In their case, their dispute was over theology and religious beliefs, which may sound trivial, but they were both heavily involved in ministry at their church, him moreso than her, so he thought it was fundamental.) I kept trying to get across to him that being right was irrelevant if it destroyed his marriage - I even bought him a copy of Alex Kendrick's The Love Dare, of which I was made aware by the well-intentioned but sort of ham-fisted movie called Fireproof.
I run into the same problem with Lady Jaye on some occasions. I feel like men's brains are generally hard-wired to see things in pretty distinct terms of black and white, right and wrong. Working in security, it's become a big part of my job. Either a person is authorized access, or they aren't. Either a procedure was followed, or it wasn't. I'm very analytical by nature, and when I feel that a question of wrong or right has important ramifications, I can get passionate about it. The shades of grey - I prefer the six standard shades provided in Microsoft Office applications to the fifty of the infamous trilogy, but whatever floats your boat - are a continual challenge for me that I've had to get good at, and could still stand to improve upon.
I'm tempted to share a lot of back story here, but I think it's wise not to do so. So, I'll skip a bit and say that Lady Jaye and her family are Roman Catholic - her mother was actually a nun - and while my feet are firmly planted in the Protestant Reformation, there near its figurative border with the Roman tradition. Lady Jaye and her mother - let's call her Um al Dikrumi - are both very fond of Pope Francis, and have recently read a book about him. (Pope Francis: Conversations with Jorge Bergoglio: His Life in His Own Words) I've had some conversations with Um al Dikrumi about Pope Francis, and expressed my concerns that many of his statements are being taken out of context or mistranslated by journalists. I'm not sure if Um al Dikrumi completely agrees with me, but she's been receptive to my theory that the Pontiff isn't the liberal reformer that the media is portraying him to be; rather, he's trying to emphasize Catholicism's traditions of compassion, service, and love, rather than its image as a dogmatic bureaucracy.
So, where am I going with this? Well, let's start by quoting a couple of passages of scripture...
And then, we have to hope that the ladies cut us the same slack.
I run into the same problem with Lady Jaye on some occasions. I feel like men's brains are generally hard-wired to see things in pretty distinct terms of black and white, right and wrong. Working in security, it's become a big part of my job. Either a person is authorized access, or they aren't. Either a procedure was followed, or it wasn't. I'm very analytical by nature, and when I feel that a question of wrong or right has important ramifications, I can get passionate about it. The shades of grey - I prefer the six standard shades provided in Microsoft Office applications to the fifty of the infamous trilogy, but whatever floats your boat - are a continual challenge for me that I've had to get good at, and could still stand to improve upon.
I'm tempted to share a lot of back story here, but I think it's wise not to do so. So, I'll skip a bit and say that Lady Jaye and her family are Roman Catholic - her mother was actually a nun - and while my feet are firmly planted in the Protestant Reformation, there near its figurative border with the Roman tradition. Lady Jaye and her mother - let's call her Um al Dikrumi - are both very fond of Pope Francis, and have recently read a book about him. (Pope Francis: Conversations with Jorge Bergoglio: His Life in His Own Words) I've had some conversations with Um al Dikrumi about Pope Francis, and expressed my concerns that many of his statements are being taken out of context or mistranslated by journalists. I'm not sure if Um al Dikrumi completely agrees with me, but she's been receptive to my theory that the Pontiff isn't the liberal reformer that the media is portraying him to be; rather, he's trying to emphasize Catholicism's traditions of compassion, service, and love, rather than its image as a dogmatic bureaucracy.
So, where am I going with this? Well, let's start by quoting a couple of passages of scripture...
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."... and then think about them. This is what the Bible is all about. This is what Ephesians is talking about when it says "husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her". And you know what? That love is difficult. Christ loved the church even though Peter thrice-denied Christ. The Epistles in the New Testament are all about screw-ups and challenges that the early church faced. Through it all, we Christians believe that Christ loved the church: patiently, kindly, without envy, without boasting, and without pride. What does that translate into for husbands (or boyfriends)? It means letting it go when you know (or at least, are confident) that you're right. It means forgiving when you feel that you've been treated unfairly. It means being selfless when your beloved can't or won't do the same. Sometimes it's difficult, and painful, and challenging, and it takes diligence and hard work. But we have to remind ourselves that it's important, and it's worthwhile.
- 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
* * *
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
- Luke 10:25-28
And then, we have to hope that the ladies cut us the same slack.
Monday 19 January 2015
Required Reading on the Sultanate of Oman
I'll give you three guesses which option I've chosen.
The books below fall almost entirely into three categories: long since out of print, available on Kindle, or available to view/download online. Instead, I've divided them into three other categories...
This first category is what I'd consider the five most important books for someone trying to learn the history, and particularly the modern history, of Oman to read.
Oman was the location of two insurgencies in the twentieth century: the Jebel Akhdar War from 1957 to 1959, and the Dhofar Rebellion from around 1962 until 1976. These are books specifically focused on those conflicts.
In addition to the books, here's a selection of articles from the last few years. The give a bit local and international context for the last ten years or so. The two exceptions are the first item, which discusses Oman's role in preparations for the 1991 Persian Gulf War; and the final item, which is a travel guide that I've found useful.
For anyone out there who's a true Oman novice, I'd also recommend the Defense Language Institute's Countries in Perspective presentation on Oman.
The list above is thorough, but not exhaustive; after all, I have to keep some tricks up my sleeve for when I write my own book about Oman and the Dhofar Rebellion. I hope to start writing that by the end of the year, once I've completed my book on the Orcadian Gordon Highlanders.
Saturday 10 January 2015
Reading in 2015
This year, one of my goals is to read more than I have in previous years. Every year, I intend to read more, but I'm trying to establish some good habits early in the year that I can build on throughout the year, and one such activity is reading. With Lady Jaye's recent visit concluded, I'm back to having some expendable time during most of my evenings, and one thing I've been pretty good about doing in this first week of the new year is reading most evenings. I set a goal on GoodReads of reading eight books in 2015. Since planning ahead tends to help to ensure that I accomplish goals (or, at least, I come closer to it than I would otherwise), I've made a list of the books I want to read this year. The first two are in order, and the rest are in no particular order.
1) Cyber War Will Not Take Place by Thomas Rid: Dr. Thomas Rid has been interviewed about "cyber war" on King's College London's War Studies Podcast several times: in October 2011, April 2013, and October 2013. I began reading his book in December, and have finished several more chapters in the last week. As I write this, I have a bit more to go, and I've been very pleased with Dr. Rid's arguments.
2) Warlords of Oman by P.S. Allfree: I've written extensively about my research about the Dhofar Rebellion. Last year, Amazon offered several new books on the conflict for download on Kindle, and I ended up reading a couple of chapters of this one before being distracted by other projects. I'm looking forward to picking it back up and reading through it once I'm finished with Dr. Rid's book.
3) Churchill's First War: Young Winston at War with the Afghans by Con Coughlin: Not quite a year ago, I listened to a lecture podcast from the Heritage Foundation in which Con Coughlin spoke about this book. I'm eager to read about Churchill's tenure in the Northwest Frontier (now in Pakistan, then in British India), which led him to write The Story of the Malakand Field Force.
4) Bleeding Talent: How the US Military Mismanages Great Leaders and Why It's Time for a Revolution by Tim Kane: Back in 2011, Dr. Tim Kane published an excellent article in The Atlantic entitled Why Our Best Officers are Leaving, in which he discussed the reasons why some of America's most talented military officers have chosen to leave uniformed service in favor of civilian jobs. Dr. Kane and a couple of other speakers were subsequently featured at an event at the Heritage Foundation. This book is an expansion of the article. Having never made it to commissioning for a number of the reasons discussed in the article and lectures, I'm very eager to read this, and suspect that it will satisfy my confirmation bias... Sort of like that Thomas Rid book.
5) Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force by Robert M. Farley: This one's another case of confirmation bias for yours truly. I've questioned the Air Force's need to exist as an independent service for a long time, and that suspicion only intensified as I studied for my master's degree in Strategy. I've listened to one interview with Robert Farley, and I've found another and another.
6) Bomb: The Race to Build--and Steal--the World's Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin: Lady Jaye's school participates in a literacy program, and this is one of the books on the list. We previously read No Easy Day and American Sniper together while I was in Scotland, and sort of burned out on Saving Private Sarbi, so we're eager to read this one together. The reviews suggest that even though the target audience is kids, it's a good overview of the atomic bomb program in the 1940's, so my time spent studying strategic nuclear doctrine makes me even more keen to read it.
7) Tower of the Sun: Stories From the Middle East and North Africa by Michael Totten: I've been following the dispatches of Michael J. Totten, a Portland-based journalist who's reported from a variety of locales. I was trying to read one of his earlier books, Where the West Ends, but that was sort of pre-empted by a combination of graduate school and laziness. I'm really looking forward to reading Totten's latest collection of dispatches.
Of course, that's not all I'll be reading this year. I do a chapter from the Bible most days, along with a passage from On War, and obviously the news. I'll also be reading from The Design and Evaluation of Physical Protection Systems by Mary Lynn Garcia and ATTP 3-39.32 (FM 3-19.30) Physical Security (the Army's physical security manual) as I pursue my PSP certification, and potentially additional materials should I choose to pursue my CISSP as well. As for that yet-to-be-chosen eighth book, I'm not sure what it will be. Maybe I'll follow up on Coughlin's book by reading The Story of the Malakand Field Force, or maybe I'll finish Where the West Ends, or H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, or Jules Vern's The Mysterious Island... Only time will tell.
UPDATE: Related: I may or may not have just submitted a profile for WarBooks.
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