Monday, February 27, 2017

From Pearl Harbor to 9/11


It might be said that the enemy is different, not a nation state but a dispersed and diffuse array of "lone wolves."

It might be said that we are different now, soft, frivolous, and self-involved with tweets.

It might be said that while the Japanese forces withdrew to new positions, the 9/11 perpetrators all died in the suicide attack: it was over as soon as it began.

It might be said defeating Japan was a military problem, whereas defeating Islamic fundamentalism is a philosophical problem or a cultural problem.

It might be said that both were contrived by conspiracies internal to the government of the United States.

It might be said that both were the result of failures to understand the enemy and the threat.

It might be said that both were the consequences of American actions that caused a reprisal from them that looked like an attack to us.

It might be said that the world of 1941 was not much different from the world of 1841, but that 2041 is going to be very much different.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Etruscans and Americans  
Counter-Insurgency  
The Syrian Quagmire 
War is Good for Absolutely Nothin'  

Friday, February 24, 2017

I Quit Meetup

I sent this to CivicAction@Meetup.com and to the Austin #Resist when I received a Meetup request from them.  I also sent it to the organizers of the groups that I belonged to, most of them for computer users.

I am cutting my access to all of my Meetup groups and to Meetup.com as of February 28, 2017, in response to a corporate decision by Meetup to support the Resist political action collectives. 
We decided that we wanted to do more to support these efforts so we created a network of 1,000 #Resist Meetup groups with a few special characteristics.” --
https://www.meetup.com/help/article/2736376/
 While I am sympathetic to many of the social justice causes pursued by Resist, I must object to Meetup’s delivering a special value to them. My comrades on the right wing also have advanced the cause of freedom. Their methods and their successes do not grab headlines.  It is a matter of culture.
What are the politics of pasta?

As collectivists, my progressive comrades form strong groups, and groups are easy to see. They grab headlines when they grab other people’s property. But that property had to be created first. The exceptionally great wealth of America was the work of millions of individuals who mostly minded their own business, making their own lives as best they knew how by the standards they chose according to their personal values. That does not make the home pages of news media – unless it is to “doodle” in celebrating the historical birthday of a dead writer, musician, inventor, or scientist.

Meetup.com is a tool for those conservatives, libertarians, and Objectivists who advance the ethics and politics of individualism.  By creating new, no-cost platforms for one political group, Meetup.com of necessity excludes those of other political beliefs – and those groups with no political agenda. It is also a platform for millions of individuals who share personal – sometimes peculiar – interests of their own, far removed from politics. And that speaks to a fundamental problem with progressive causes.

It is critical that this be understood. Dr. Martin Luther King looked forward to a future in which each person is judged by the content of their character.  But character is an attribute of a person, not of a group. 
The Pursuit of Happiness is selfish.
Choosing not to do business with someone because they are not from your ethnic, social, gender, class, or religious group is irrational.  But freedom of association is a fundamental political right. While my collectivist comrades try to eliminate discrimination by engaging the power of the state, my friends on the right go to the root of the problem: lack of character.

If the owners of Meetup.com want to end social injustice, they should empower their customers who meet to build character. But that would mean creating a 1000 special groups for some religions or some philosophies in preference to others.  And there is no way to parse that, because, after all, even karate builds character.

Therefore, I will delete my Meetup account and switch to some other service or set of services, such as Google Groups, which, in fact, evolved from the age-old Usenet maillists.  Ultimately, no one needs Meetup.com. That is something to keep in mind.

Michael E. Marotta

Sunday, February 19, 2017

2017 Austin Energy Regional Science Fair

For the sixth consecutive year, I judged the middle school and high school exhibits in Behavioral Sciences in the Austin Energy Regional Science Festival. I also judged both sections of elementary school entries.  As always, it was challenging and fascinating. 
Before the show, I walked the event looking for
projects with military applications.
This year, none of the entries in Behavioral Science was advanced to the Best of Show competition. Unlike previous years, none had the best statistical summaries, and none got beyond the Internet for research citations. Nonetheless, many of the 50+ were outstanding. We judges argued over our two rounds of selections to find the best five, three of which were sent on the state level of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.
Drones and robots are already
engaged in the battle space.
Synesthesia, Attitudes of Foreigners Toward American Values, the emotional content of colors, how sales personnel influence buyer decisions, the difference in to-go versus in-store serving sizes, judgments of personality types based on eye color, the physiological stresses associated with lying, and gender differences in multitasking were some of the many entries.  Woody Allen famously said that 85% of success is showing up. These kids all acquired special learning and perhaps ineffable experience by carrying out their experiments, recording their results, and presenting their findings.
It gives a new meaning to "Mobile Infantry"
This was reinforced for me the day before the fair when my officemates were puzzled by an assignment to present a broad set of findings over the past year to a large floating assortment of public officials. "You need three-fold presentation boards," I said. "What are those?" they asked. After the science fair, when the tasking was discussed again, our supervisor (who was out of the office earlier) said that he bought them for his son's science fair project.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Where All the Children are Above Average
World Peace Through Massive Retaliation
2014 Austin Energy Science Festival
2016 Austin Energy Science Festival
Monsters of the Id
Teaching Science with Science Fiction

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

12 O'Clock High

One of my captains recommended this. “You ought to get a lot out it, even based on what you know now,” he said. I think that he meant the problem of identifying with the men you have to send into battle, their deaths taking a toll on you, your wanting to protect them from the mission even though the mission comes first. 

For me, the first thing that resonated was when the flight commander was told that the warning had just been issued and that new orders will be there soon.  WARNO… OPORD… FRAGO… is the battle rhythm, even for those of us who are not issued weapons because we provide community care.

A Fragment amends an Operations Order. Operations Orders have five sections. (When it is one page – at the insistence of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower – those are five paragraphs.) Situation; Mission; Execution; Sustainment; Command and Control. 

The consequential lesson here was the importance of discipline to morale. In the movie, BG Frank Savage (Gregory Peck) arrives at the 918th Bomb Group by busting a sergeant down to private for failing to challenge him at the gate and failing to salute. In real life, the most politically liberal staff officer in my group insisted that as a petty officer second class (E-5), when talking to a staff sergeant (E-6), I should be at parade rest. She said that she saw it stateside and she saw it in theater: you do not build morale by being lax; the tightest groups, the ones with the strongest esprit, were the ones with the best discipline.

After watching We Were Soldiers, I read the book by Hal Moore.  (Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore just passed on February 10.)  That book was different from that movie.  (See my review here.)  In this case, the authors of the novel, Bernie Lay, Jr., and Sy Bartlett, wrote the screenplay.  Unfortunately, the book is not available at my local university or city libraries.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Monday, February 13, 2017

World War II Sweetheart Dinner and Dance (2017)

The Texas Military Forces Museum hosted a Valentine's Day party Saturday evening, February 11, 2017.  Period dress was encouraged, though not required. About a dozen men and a couple of women were in uniform.  About 15 or 20 women were in 1940s dresses and hair-dos. The evening was highlighted by a silent auction with an array of period artifacts and other interesting items. The 20-piece swing band was fronted by The Memphis Belles. It was an opportunity to relive a moment of the Greatest Generation. 

The Band

The Memphis Belles

Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me ...

The Lieutenant and I were both 4th Army.
They were a training group at Fort Sam Houston.
My other sleeve was for
2nd Infantry Division ("Second to None")
which developed new techniques and tactics
at Fort Sam and Camp Bullis.
I bought my uniform at The Quonset Hut because the owner, Ed Hall, works closely with the Museum. Ed made me a deal, pointed out my uniform with oak leaves and other authentic brass, and gave me background on my units. The ribbons are my own:  Adjutant General's Individual Service Award, Humanitarian Service Award; Leadership (2), Physical Fitness, and Basic Training.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Short Snorters  
A Successful Imitation of Alan Turing  
Peace is More Powerful  
The Fourth Star  

Sunday, February 5, 2017

Romantic Realism

Romantic Realism is a school of aesthetics that developed as a consequence of the works of Ayn Rand. Rand saw herself (paraphrasing) as "the last of the Romantics or the first of their return."  The label Romantic Realism appears nowhere in Ayn Rand's  The Romantic Manifesto (1969). However, many of the artists who create these modern expressions of heroic values found validation in Rand's works. Quent Cordair Fine Art Galleries of Napa, California, sells their sculptures and paintings. (One artist not in their sales group, but in that style, is Michael Newberry.) 

Bryan Larsen at Quent Cordair Galleries
Perhaps the best known realist painter was Norman Rockwell. The problem with his realism is that the themes are from the naturalist school: quaint, commonplace, everyday. Some of his works do step outside of the village life typified by Thornton Wilder's Our Town. Perhaps his best was "Freedom of Speech" one of the Four Freedoms series that he created as propaganda for America's efforts in World War II. But that was an exception.
Tamara Bonêt at Quent Cordair Fine Art
Aesthetic romanticism was launched by the French school of the 19th century: Gericault, Delacroix, and Rodin. It was expressed best by the Academic schools (France, America, Britain) of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. William-Adolphe Bouguereau's realistic myths typify that. But they were submerged by later critics and theorists who promoted Impressionism, Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Cubism, Dada, and stuff even worse. The reason (or excuse) that I learned in an art history class in college was that the invention of the photographic camera made realism unnecessary. So, artists sought new modes.
Quent Cordair at Quent Cordair Fine Art
Of course, it is impossible to get a snapshot of a successful Icarus descending. And even mundane images of shepherdesses or mourners would have to be staged, lit, shot, and developed, each step an artist's choice of values.
Karl Jensen at Quent Cordair Fine Art
That is the essence of aesthetics, according to Ayn Rand: "Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments."  And that is where Bouguereau failed: his people are often sad and wistful, the girls often vacuous. None of his figures are positively assertive. The best are enraptured with passion, but it is passive pleasure given by others in adoration.
Pursuit by Michael Newberry at
http://www.michaelnewberry.com/
Romantic Realism takes the style of  the Academic school and empowers it with the internal engine of motivation.
"Quent Cordair Fine Art was established by artist Quent Cordair in 1996. As a premier provider of contemporary Romantic Realism in painting, sculpture and drawing, QCFA has grown to serve an international clientele of private and corporate collectors.
"Romantic Realism, the movement which renews the high esthetic standards and techniques of pre-20th century ateliers, brings a rebirth of comprehensibility, beauty, romanticism and stylization to contemporary subject matter. The gallery's collection emphasizes themes which celebrate the moments of happiness, joy and success possible to Man on earth.
"Subject matter includes figurative, narrative, allegorical, still lifes, seascapes and landscapes. Award-winning painters and sculptors of international renown are represented, as well as emerging artists of unique vision and accomplishment. Commissions are available for portraiture, murals, garden and architectural projects.
"QCFA's extensive website serves as an invaluable resource for private collectors, interior designers and landscape designers. For additional information, please call (707) 255-2242." -- http://cordair.com/
ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Art as Ordered Narrative  
The Art of Finance 
Art & Copy 
Money is Speech