A Few Words from...Jerry Pournelle

"By the 1960's, the authorities could write that peace was more important than law.  Enforcement of international law was entrusted to the United Nations - whose charter stated that no power could interfere in the internal affairs of another, and made self defense the only reason for resorting to force.

A small country could seize the property of a great power; murder her citizens, defy every contract and convention; and the authorities would gravely announce that the Great Power had no right to take military action.   The powers could only sue before a court that could not enforce its judgments.

Pretty soon, nobody paid much attention to international law."

- "Enforcer", High Justice (1974)

"As he went through the rather dingy corridors Enoch thought about Alden.  Incomprehensible, like all Americans.  The whole country seemed to have a collective guilt complex about its past successes.  The world struggled after the impossible goal of obtaining a way of life that Americans had achieved, while the Americans grimly hung onto what they had and covered themselves with self reproach.  Incomprehensible people, all of them."

- "Enforcer, High Justice (1974)

Nobody Is Born A Warrior

Thanksgiving Day 2019

George Washington's 1789

Thanksgiving Proclamation

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me to "recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the 3d day of October, A.D. 1789.

- http://www.wilstar.com/holidays/wash_thanks.htm

The Hour Of Your Doom

- Which, if you think about it, could be a very terrifying thing.  But even Christians believe that God knows everything about our existence, even the hour of our own passing.  Thus, in a sense, even in the Christian World View the Hour of Our Doom (really our death or Judgement) is already set in God's calendar.  Do not do anything foolish of course - being an idiot solves nothing and ruins your usefulness - but neither be overly worried about when your time will come. 

Something To Give Up, Something To Add

It is already almost the end of November.  Never too early to begin thinking about goals for next year.

I looked at this years goals.  In a word, I achieved almost none of them - some by dint of the fact that events changed, but some simply did not happen.  That makes the whole consideration rather dismal, and this with a month to go in this year (pretty much no chance to accomplish any of the rest of them, unfortunately).

One wants to do better, of course. I actually want to create goals that both make me stretch and at the same time are achievable.  So perhaps I need to go about finding a different way to do it.

As I sat there looking at my list and sighing rather intently, the thought arose "Why do you not think about giving something up as a goal?"

Hmm. A "negative" goal.  I had never thought of this before.  I have thought of goals in terms of  accomplishing or adding something, not subtracting or removing something. 

So I am thinking about changing up goals this year.  The categories will still be the same, but for each item  of adding-accomplishing-doing there will be something for subtracting-removing-ending.

How does this apply itself?  Well, I will try to make something up on the fly to demonstrate.

One thing I need to work on next year is my sleep pattern, which is awful and not at all near the 7.5 to 8 hours a night that research suggests most people should get.  To help with this, there are really two components:  allocating the time to encompass the sleep and doing things to make sure that you get the sleep.  So a positive goal would be to "Allow for 8 hours of sleep a night".  I know my rising times, so that becomes a math problem.

The second part of it becomes the issue - how do I make sure I get 8 hours of sleep a night?  One easy item is to make sure that I go to bed at a prescribed time each night (which I have better control over than when I wake up every morning).  Which means I will have to curtail my scheduled activities and move a schedule such that I really get 8 hours a night.

So a negative goal in this sense would be "Ending all activities at 9:00 PM" or  "Not checking electronics after 8:00 PM" (something that inevitably keeps me up).

I will keep working on this, of course.  But I need to be here this time next year with items that were achieved, not things that I wish I had done.

When Do Nation States Give Up On Themselves?

When do nation states give up on themselves? When are they no longer worth fighting for?  When do they simply dissolve, perhaps not into chaos but into smaller units for which the past becomes a vague memory?

Governments, of course, never give up on themselves.  They always consider themselves to the best form of rule and therefore see no reason for anything to change at all.  (Yes, I know a great many people define this as "the elites", but the elites can be anyone those not an elite do not care for.  A government is a distinct unit).  For them, anything that is not themselves represents disorder and chaos and a bad ending.

No, what ultimately holds a nation state together is the belief of its population in the nation state.  The inhabitants the believe in the state, that are willing to abide by (and enforce) its laws, that are willing to die for wars, that are willing to pay its taxes, that are ultimately willing to endure decisions which impact themselves poorly but help the nation state as a whole - these are the ones that hold the nation state together.  Without them, the government at best rules an apathetic population who does not care (to quote a joke from the Cold War Soviet Union days, "We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us") or at worst a population which is actively working to destroy the government.

History, of course, is littered with these:  The back and forth of Chinese Empire (perhaps until the Yuan dynasty), the rise, dissolution, and re-convening of Japan's Sengoku Jidai (Age of War) that accompanied the latter years of the Ashikaga Shogunate, the Western Roman Empire and then the Eastern Roman Empire (or as was said in the 1400s,
'Better the Sultan's turban than the Pope's Tiara"), the Norman conquest of England and the disappearance of the Anglo-Saxon order (after Hereward the Wake we do not hear of more resistance), the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into what we now call Central Europe, the Fall of Imperial Russia and the the re-fall of Communist Russia and then the Warsaw Pact itself.  All of these, at some point, even if there were (as there often were) a violent takeover, ultimately collapsed because those that lived in them did not support (or came not to support) the previous regime.

Why does that matter, today of all days? I find myself questioning the longevity of most modern nation states, including my own.

I can only speak of my own experience, which perhaps both gives weight to my considerations as well as undermining them as being my own - but with my self, I am finding less and less connection to the concept and idea of my own government on a national scale.

Overall my government - be they one party or the other in power - have taken a much greater concern in how I think, what I believe, and how I live my life rather than in creating and establishing a system where I can live my life.  The circle of my ability to live freely has slowly been eroded over the course of my life to where alone in a room with no windows, no electronic devices is the only place I am free of potential government involvement and action.

Add to that, as the population has grown over the years and the size of lawmaking bodies has not, my representation has grown smaller and smaller. I may be on in 15 million for my state and on in 330,000,000 for the nation:  can it be said that government truly represents my best interests?

I am the first to confess that in many ways I am still very grateful to my country - after all, the concept of God-given rights versus rights granted by the government started no-where else and even while under attack, still seems to be a bedrock - but the trend is not towards government making itself less intrusive but more intrusive, more overbearing rather than less, more controlling instead of more enabling.  And I suspect I am not the only one.

Given this, can we truly not be that far away from a day when we begin to wonder if something else is better than something we have - and act on it?

Just Because I Am Old...

(Hat Tip:  Frank and Fern)

Even I (Almost) Have The Cat Meme

Accurate Versus Precise

I am accurate. I am not always precise.

Accurate:  Done with care; conforming exactly, deviating only slightly or within acceptable limits from a standard.

Precise:  Minutely exact; exactly or sharply defined or stated.

So I am accurate - I get the gist of information or the sense of it, the concept of what is being discussed.  But I am not always precise.  And I really need to work on becoming more precise, especially in my line of work. 

An important note:  Accuracy does not necessary take time, but being precise always does.  That comes at a cost, of course:  accuracy generally happens more quickly than being precise.  So accuracy has its place as well.

What can one do to become more precise?  (Or really, what is my opinion on what one can do to become more precise?)

- Define the outcome up front.  Decide if accuracy or precision is required.
- Allow sufficient time and focus for the decided outcome.  Precision is never accomplished in a rushed fashion.
- Have someone review your work.
- Re-review your work.  Maybe review it a third time.
- Have a clear line of sight on where the data supporting either assertion (accurate or precise) is coming from.
- Make a clear statement.
- Review after each event:  What went wrong?  What could have gone better?  Was I not precise enough?  Was I overly precise?  Did I really accomplish what I set out to do?

What say ye?  Accurate?  Or Precise?

The Collapse XXXVIII: Winter And Work

04 October 20XX

My Dear Lucilius:

Gray weather accompanies this missive today. We have had a scattering of snow flurries; my “warmer weather” has melted as quickly as a snowflake in the sun. Not intolerable to be sure, but neither quite the Octobers of my youth.

Every day that it is not snowing is a day to be out doing – this has always been true, I suppose, but no more so than now, where every day out is pushing out the potential survival curve a little more. So I bundle up to go fishing or collect wood. You have never quite known joy until you try to catch a fish at 36 F; you have not known greater joy in trying to clean said fish.

Collecting deadwood, at least, does not make the fingers as cold.

If it snows, of course, little enough is to be done. Even before, inevitably one or two people a year would perish from being outside in a snowstorm and getting lost; how much more so now when medical aid is effectively gone. I learned years ago to tie a loose line between the door and the greenhouse and the pump shed to always find my way back (I suppose, now, one to the old outhouse – one never knows).

With snow, of course, some level of activity become critical, so snow days involve indoor calisthenics and the walking machine (which I despise, by the by, but better to stay in shape than despise). It is a careful balance, of course: burn too many calories and the food all goes away; do not enough and the muscles and endurance disappear. So I walk, listening to classical music and trying to remember walks of my younger days in far away places, when things seemed more pleasant.

Our power, for some reason, has been on more of late and so I have been able to follow the world outside of the “glass”, at least on those few sites that continue to operate. It sounds horrendous everywhere. I note that the government sites still continue to shine forth messages of “Things are going to get better” without providing any concrete information.

I look out where my truck used to sit. I have all the information I currently need.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

Death Of The Summer Garden

Winter has fallen:

Okra's last leaves are dull brown,

pods standing starkly.

Learning Online: An Update

Oddly enough, this attempt to learn new things has kind of gotten a hold of me.

I am taking "Principles of Analytical Chemistry" - yes, I know what you are thinking:  "Have you lost your mind?  This is first thing you start with?  There was not anything more interesting or relevant to your life that this is what you started with?"

Let us just say that I am filling in a very old knowledge gap that needs to be rounded out.

Here is the odd thing: I find that I am kind of enjoying it (yes, even this dusty, dreary subject).

In terms of practice, it is not more than 20-25 minutes a day, which means I am completing a lecture every two days.  So the time investment is not burdensome.  But I forgot - until now - how much taking in new knowledge.

On a side note, the lecture format - at least this lecture format - works for me.  But then again this is not a class designed for the InterWeb (which I do not do so well at), rather a class that has been recorded and is available on the InterWeb.  There seems to be a difference.  And for regular classes, I am okay - I was always very good at going to school.

What is that point of all of this, you may ask - after all, this knowledge will bring you up to the level of all your coworkers (science based industry and all) and indeed, after this you will know as much as a high school freshman (or maybe an eighth grader - they teach it earlier now).  It will not make my life better in any discernible way.  I will not get a degree or credit for doing it, and it will never show up directly in my body of work.

But it is knowledge - and knowledge is something that is always valuable, sometimes even if it is not apparent at the time.

And for me, the other aspect is simply the act of doing it.  It is the discipline of getting up 5 days a week and siting down and learning.  And discipline itself is always the ultimate reward.

Performing An Embu

This weekend we performed an Embu  (demonstration).

An embu, I find, is somewhat nerve wracking.  It has all of the potential stress of any public demonstration - people are watching what you are doing, very closely.  It does not help, of course, that one is dressed a formal attire and in our case, actually carrying swords.  You are quite the focus of attention.

Which is in and of itself enough.  But combine that with  combined with the additional reality of the fact that one is representing one's school - and for 99% of the people involved, the very art itself.  No-one has heard of Iaijutsu, let alone really knows what it is.  All they know is you have swords and you look like you are going to use them. 

The good news is, of course, everything went well - and by well, I mean that it passed the two major considerations of any major event:  No-one was injured and everyone completed their demonstration.  Looking at the initial videos I can see, we looked okay (I say that - of course, there is always something that you can do better). 

Two particular items of note from the embu, at least from my position:

1)  My heart was racing preparing to perform and then performing.  I have no understanding of why this occurred, only that it did.  It strikes me as odd, considering that I have performed some of these kata hundreds of times.

2)  Once one enters the kata, I found myself in the zone.  That I know of I did not make any serious errors in conduct of the kata.  One comment that did come back to me is that for at least one of the paired drills, my fellow student's sword came close - very close -to my head.  To be honest I have no memory of this happening, so maybe it just appeared more so from the side. 

It was good practice.  We will be performing an embu in February when I travel to Japan next year.  Hopefully this will serve as a good foretaste to prepare myself (mostly, to get my heart rate down). 

God Judged It Better

You Never Know How Strong

What You Do Today

Resources For Fighting Loss of Learning and Excellence

Because of yesterday's post - one needs resources, of course!

The podcast "Grow, Adapt, and Reinvent Yourself Through Ultralearning"

The book itself:  Ultralearning:  Master Hard Skills, Outsmart The Competition, and Accelerate Your Career

One of the things I learned through the Podcast is that MIT (Massachusetts Institute Of Technology) has a great many classes that you can take on-line for free:  Link

But that is not all!  Lots of schools do:  Link

So what are you waiting for!  Go do some excellent learning today!

Loss Of Learning And Excellence

So a funny thing happened last week.

I was listening to a podcast from The Art of Manliness entitled "Grow, Adapt, and Re-invent Yourself Through Ultra Learning" (More on that tomorrow) in which the author of the book Ulltralearining, Scott Young, describes individuals who learn large amounts of new things in a short time (he himself took the equivalent of a computer science degree from MIT online in less than a year).  As I as listening to it, I suddenly made a huge discovery:

I was not longer into becoming better. I was in to just remaining at my current level.  And that was leading to a high level of frustration in my life.

I am busy. O friend, I am busy.  I am as busy as I have ever been, or more so.  But interestingly, I am not trying to become a better person anymore.  All I do anymore is work a great deal and try and fit in the little bits of my own life.

This alarmed me.  This shocked me.  I tried to think of when this lack of willingness to try new things and the pursuit of excellence left me.  Surely it was within the last year or so (turns out it was).

And my current goals reflect this:  they are things to do, not things to become or even achieve.

So I need to fix this.  I need to find that drive to become better, to become excellent, to learn more.  I need that as the focus, not just doing more.

That helps in a lot of ways - for example, I will focus less (or not at all) on the things I cannot control.  I will focus on the things I can control, on learning new things and strengthening what I have and become better.  It will help me push through things - not just do them (my current nemesis) but have a reason for why I am doing them (to get better, to learn something new).

Why does this happen?  Because I fell into a bad habit, a habit many people (I suspect) fall into:  we get so busy trying to just stay afloat that we lose the push for being excellent.  For learning new things.

Work - I would love to say within the last month but it has been longer than that - has become an exercise in just getting by.  Just getting through the next crisis.  Just getting through to do the next thing.

When that happens, I eventually lose the will to do better.  Why?  Because it is enough to get things done, because there is always something else to be done.

Of course, this does nothing for my career - or my life.  Everything becomes one long reactionary event, trying to either get something resolved or avoid something else.  And ultimately, just stay in place.

So that needs to stop.  And I need to rediscover the reason to excel and learn new things again.  Because now I have seen this side of things.  And that road leads nowhere good.

Sweet Potato Harvest 2019

This is the 2019 sweet potato yield:

There are three different varieties represented (you would think I remember what I planted.  I do not and will have to look them up).

Overall I am very pleased.  Sweet Potatoes are something else that are adapted to our current hot and humid summer climate.  They performed like champs; their growing season was about six months.

Apparently there is now a "hardening off" where I have to let them settle a bit before they are edible.  Still, there are a good many meals represented here.  I will be growing them again next year

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place: and in the sky

The larks still bravely singing fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead: Short days ago,

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved: and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe

To you, from failing hands, we throw

The torch: be yours to hold it high

If ye break faith with us who die,

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Lt. Colonel John McCrae 03 May 1915

Telling The Truth

A Few Words From...Charlton Heston

Japanese Rabbits

In lieu of my typical Friday thoughtful statement, a couple of Japanese prints of Rabbits for you to enjoy:

The Collapse XXXVII: Ponderings

28 September 20XX

My Dear Lucilius:

We have had a bit of a return of autumn – just enough to give a bit more life to the garden – but it feels as if our Winter is returning for good. That is not terribly surprising for this time of year, of course.

The issue of the now-gone truck has haunted me far more than I had anticipated. I had anticipated, of course, that something like this could happen at some time. One would like to believe that I had prepared myself mentally for it. But nothing prepares you for the quiet sound of a velvet demand backed up by force.

It is the question that ultimately undergirds every civilized society, is it not? Will rule of law prevail, or the rule of the tyrant? The law of the jungle – the strong over the weak – or the rights of the individual?

At one time – in my youth – I would have told you that the rule and the law and the individual was the winner. A few years ago and really up to this past summer, I would have told you that the rule of the tyrant – or the tyrannical – was what prevailed (carefully preserved under the name of “the best thing for the people”). And now, perhaps we have moved to the law of the strong over the weak.

I know, I know, Lucilius – you wonder if I have any actual practical advice to suggest in all of this. I may, but it is not the practical sort of thing that makes many people happy.

In my world, the fact that this happened now – rather than later – is a good thing. Now, we still have some semblance of the rule of law. There was no shooting that I am aware of for this incident. No-one – at least here – died. And now, people’s attention is now firmly planted on the here and now with what we have around us, including ourselves. It is clear – brutally clear to any who would think about it briefly – that no help is coming from any of our elected officials.

As I mentioned, Winter is coming soon here – and with Winter will come the virtual end of much activity around here. In years past, the only activity would have been occasionally hunting and those going to their jobs. This year, almost nothing will happen.

But it is not just with us. It is with those around us as well. Those soldiers – and the ones they represent – will not be back until Spring. The cost to benefit ratio of driving here to collect anything is small. There are towns much closer and the cities will demand their attention. Cities fall into disorder far more than the countryside does. And demand more attention. And Winter costs fuel and supplies.

Do not mistake me – I think they may be back, but not until Spring. And by Spring, much will have changed both here and there.

My mental preparations need to be deeper and more thoughtful than they were before, Lucilius. The hard times are no longer coming. They are now here.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca.

Traveling And Not Traveling

One of the great "divides" that exists in the TB household is that of travel.  

The Ravishing Mrs. TB is a traveler.  She likes to travel and enjoys all parts of planning for the trip: researching where to go, making itineraries, booking places, deciding which restaurants she wants to eat at, identifying small wonders to be discovered.  And she is willing to go anywhere.

I am less of a traveler.  I do not mind going, but the places I am interested in going are pretty specific.  I really do not enjoy the planning aspect of it (other that to find the things I would like to see).  I am just as much a "spend time at home" person, both by inclination and by current reality (e.g., when you out of your home so much that you pay for, you like to be in it when you can be).

This has created, as you might imagine, a bit of a thought exercise as we continue to roll towards not having Na Clann around anymore.  Any sort of long term relocation has to be set in terms of not only all the usual things, but availability of an airport to go away.  This tends to limit one's options for relocation.

How does this all end up?  Not sure, but I suspect that in the end someone will be taking more vacations and someone else will be spending more time back at home. Which is perfectly okay - I think we have discovered over the years that we can each do that part of it well.

But yes, there are still some places that even I would like to still go.  Maybe I will even tear myself away from my projects and goals to see them.

Passion And Stress

This last week ended a period of 4 weeks at work where I (and a great many other people) have been working 60 + hour weeks to get something done.  We ended up accomplishing the task Friday evening. 

Sadly, there was no sense of achievement or accomplishment.  It was more of a "Well, that is done.  On to the next emergency."  And then this gem showed up on my view in The Book Of Face.

It is a fair point when you think about it, is it not?  We put in the the same amount of work regardless.  It is just what we are working on that changes our perspective.  I have spent, over the years, hours working on Iai, something which has no direct perceivable value in the modern world.  I can assure you that I have never felt stressed by it.  At the same time, I have my most recent month that tells me based on my stress level exactly how I am feeling about what I currently do.

Is it a 100% either/or?  Of course not.  There are always moments where even a passion can create stress (for example, preparing for a demonstration) or where an item of stress can provide a moment of passion (as when something I do impacts someone's life).  But underlying all of this is the reality that, for the most part, it is true.

Think about your words.  How do speak when you are talking about something you do not believe in versus something you believe in? (I read some of your blogs and know what you think....)  It is telling if you think about it, is it not?

I do not have a full answer here (I seldom do, it seems), other than to say I am simply going to start asking the question about stress versus passion.  And see what my words tell me.

On Work Culture

This weekend I finished the first of four modules of a certificate program I am taking for work.  This particular module was on Organizational Culture - something I have intuitively known is important at companies, but could never quite put into words.

In short (to digest 4-6 hours of videos), organizational culture matters because without it, people do not stay.  There is nothing to keep them engaged in the work nor is anything to keep them there except for an income (and incomes can be easily replaced).  And eventually, it will destroy any company.

I write this as someone who works at a company that has not sufficiently defined its culture - in our case, we went from less than 20 to almost 200 in the space of two years.  As a small company, culture is almost something instinctive - after all, you see each other every day.  Culture is almost assumed or just an extension of the relationships that you have with each other.  But get enough people involved just doing the work to keep a company going and all of a sudden you find that suddenly have no culture at all, in fact nothing but a mad dash to be doing and keep doing essentially until the end of the company or the end of time, whichever comes first.

Oddly enough, when the subject is mentioned (I have brought it up, others have as well) it seems to get a general sort of nod and "We should do something about that", followed by the comment "That is something we are looking for the department leaders to do" (research suggests this is the responsibility of senior management, by the by).  Unfortunately, as anyone slightly lower down on the rung from the top knows, trying to put anything in place which has not been approved by the top inevitably ends (at best) with a "Cease and Desist" or at worst with more rigorous consequences.

What am I going to do?  The part I can, of course. I can propose a culture for my department, I can live by it - but I have no sense that it will permeate the company.

That, of course, and consider what my next steps should be.

Never Be The First To Forsake A Friend

A Few Words From...Thomas Jefferson

“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.” 

(HT:  Survival Blog)

Self Discipline And Self Control