Setec Astronomy

An ill-advised attempt to log on to Clearly Erroneous after a very long absence encompassing the mandatory change to gmail logons appears to have indelibly imprinted that blog with my personal account and only that account's information. Meaning it displays the same name for all posts, including the vast majority I didn't write.

Deleting the blog from my dashboard appears to have made it impossible for me to ever again access the blog, but trying to logon to the old name still requires my gmail password. Provide it and...you get my dashboard without access to CE. As far as I can tell, no one will ever again be able to log on to the blog, and the "author" for every single post over there will always display whatever I show on this blog. Which for the immediate future is going to be a meaningless placeholder.

Beautiful.

Update: Never mind about the placeholder. Changing it didn't effect CE, no doubt because I broke the link by deleting it from my dashboard. I suppose Blogger customer service might help me out if I ask nicely. Maybe.

Interestingly, although I inadvertently converted myself into the sole person able to access CE, I didn't have full ownership permissions for things like, say, deleting the whole blog. Blogger, your changeover implementation for group blogs sucks.

Oral tirades are still with us, of course, even if they're no longer as likely to turn our matrons into whores

And believe me, I've tried.

Say what you want about Mel Gibson, but the son of a bitch knows story structure

I suppose I should note that the captains who teach us fire support and manual gunnery are frighteningly competent, professional, and even a little inspiring.

I first met the man who would be my gunnery instructor at our first day in the field. My gun crew got summoned to the fire direction center (FDC) to see how it operates. We apparently didn't walk fast enough and were told to head back and do it again. So it was with inwardly rolled eyes I saw him again for ballistics class in week 2. And yet while he is pretty anal about numerous little things, in my opinion a totally inappropriate attitude for a man teaching us how to perform fiddly calculations to determine where high explosives should be fired at targets we can't see, he's also pretty funny.

Take our firing charts class. Drawing a chart involves the use of a range-deflection protractor (colloquially known as the Klingon battle axe), a large grid square sheet, and lots and lots of pins to mark firing battery, target, and observer locations.

Before that day I would have doubted the ability of any man to match me in the amount of innuendo dropped during activities involving putting small pins (he, naturally, had a bigger set of pins to go with his bigger chart) into holes over and over again. I thought our platoon leader had finally caught him out with his reference to maintaining "shaft to shaft contact" when laying a targeting circle, but apparently he'd let that obvious one pass because it's exclusively a Marine term and method. A natural outgrowth of certain shipborne behaviors, no doubt.

Even if he was drawing on the accumulated lore of generations of gunnery instructors before him, as I suspect, I have to admire his delivery. I never would have thought the old martinet had it in him.

Free the SINCGARS Nine!

So, inspired by the crapitude of several NCO-taught courses in a row that had started late or not happened at all, I decided along with several other gentlemen to bug out of my radio class last Friday afternoon.

No instructors showed up until 20 minutes after it was supposed to start, then after signing the "I have been briefed on the class rules" sheet (I hadn't) I and the other overflow students were kicked out of one classroom to await the prophesied arrival of the second instructor. I decided I had better things to do, given I'd had the same class in OCS five months ago.

Alas, after action reports revealed a mysterious man in suit and tie arrived in the middle of class and conspicuously checked off the sign-in list against the names of those in actual attendance. I got the word this morning that I and my compatriots are to see the battery commander tomorrow to discuss our collective error in judgment. Naturally, we received word of this appointment in a class that started 20 minutes late and got out nearly three hours before it was scheduled to end.

Of the nine, eight were from second platoon, including their platoon leader and one section leader. That's a 20% absentee rate. First platoon, alas, only had one evildoer. I suppose someone had to uphold our honor.

There is nothing of the man you loved in that car! Nothing!

Shaun of the Dead is on Comedy Central. This reminds me that if you haven't seen it before, you really should.

Yoda, Ph. D

Via Gene Expression, a twin study where a pair of twins given up for adoption were deliberately separated and kept ignorant of each other.

Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein lived very similar lives. They were both born in New York, edited their high school newspapers and studied film at university. And both were adopted in 1968.

It was only at the age of 35 that they discovered each other and just how similar they were: identical twins who had been separated as infants in a bizarre social experiment.

* * *

On that first day Elyse did not reveal the secret she had discovered during her research. But soon afterwards she told Paula that they had been deliberately separated at birth and were the subjects of a unique study on nurture versus nature, a debate that has enthralled scientists for generations.

The real purpose of the experiment was hidden from their adoptive parents, who were vaguely told that the children were part of an ongoing study.

"They neglected to tell them the key element of the study, which is that it was about child development among twins raised in different homes," Paula told America's National Public Radio.

* * *

They also tackled the scientist behind the experiment that changed their lives, Peter Neubauer, an internationally renowned child psychiatrist.

At first he refused to speak but he eventually agreed to meet them as long as their conversation wasn't recorded. They allege he showed no remorse and offered no apology.

The twins found that he was willingly aided by the Louise Wise adoption agency that handled both their adoptions.

Viola Bernard, a child psychologist and consultant to the agency, had firmly believed that twins should be raised separately to improve their psychological development, and that dressing and treating them the same retarded their minds.

Separating twins at birth was ended in the state of New York in 1980, a year after the study ended.

Aware that his research would be criticised, Mr Neubauer reportedly locked the study in an archive at Yale University, not to be opened until 2066. "It's kind of disturbing to think that all this material about us is in some filing cabinet somewhere," Paula said.

Get a rope

Despite its other horrors, Lawton, OK has two Tex-Mex restaurants that aspire to and safely achieve adequacy, a far, far better situation than the crap I tried in Columbus, GA.

However, I was shocked to learn that the great culinary abomination I encountered in a "chili" burger in Georgia, beans as an ingredient, is also to be found in a local chain establishment calling itself Lone Star Steakhouse. I wonder if the justifiable arson defense that would save me across the southern border is in effect here.

Once you get past a certain threshold, everyone's problems are the same: fortifying your island and hiding the heat signature from your fusion reactor

When your laboratory explodes, lacing your body with a super-charged elixir, what do you do? You don't just lie there. You crawl out of the rubble, hideously scarred, and swear vengeance on the world. You keep going. You keep trying to take over the world.

No, this isn't (just) a metaphor for my love life. It's the lesson learned by Doctor Impossible, super villian, evil genius (suffering from Malign Hypercognition Disorder), and charming anti-hero of the wonderful novel Soon I Will Be Invincible, wherein his twelfth escape from prison and his thirteenth attempt at world domination are described.

Although it has apparently been out for months, has its own web page and a Wikipedia entry, I'd never heard of it before today. The title made me pick it up. The dust jacket art, reminding of nothing so much as Butters/Professor Chaos, made me open it. The table of contents made me read it.

PART ONE

1. Foiled Again
2. Welcome to the Team
3. Riddle Me This
4. Superfriends
5. Free at Last
6. The Game Is Afoot
7. Enemy of my Enemy
8. Earth's Mightiest Heroes
9. My Master Plan Unfolds
10. Welcome to My Island

PART TWO

11. Invincible
12. Save the World
13. Never Surrender
14. At Last We Meet
15. Maybe We Are Not So Different, You and I
16. Secret Origins

PART THREE

17. Join Me and We Cannot Be Defeated
18. And Now for Those Meddling Children
19. But Before I Kill You
20. Girl Most Likely to Succeed
21. No Prison Can Hold Me

Reading made me buy it to put some money in Austin Grossman's publisher's pocket so he can write again.

This is a must read for all unselfaware comic book fans, comic book haters inspired by self loathing of their own nerdom, bullied adolescents, and megalomaniacs. Every other fan and positive reviewer of the book, alas, seems to fall in the first category; I've been all of the others at one point or another.

Everyone else, probably including the author, misunderstands this book as a very clever, highly amusing, and fast paced parody of and homage to every comic book cliche ever created. And it is that. But it's also a damning indictment of the sorts of people who created and enjoyed those cliches. If you didn't squirm as much as you laughed when you read it you, like Dr. Impossible, are doomed to fail and fail again in life.

I'm not a criminal. I didn't steal a car. I didn't sell heroin, or steal an old lady's purse. I built a quantum fusion reactor in 1978, and an orbital plasma gun in 1979, and a giant laser-eyed robot in 1984. I tried to conquer the world and almost succeeded, twelve times and counting.

* * *

I'm the smartest man in the world. Once I wore a cape in public, and fought battles against men who could fly, who had metal skin, who could kill you with their eyes. I fought CoreFire to a standstill, and the Super Squadron, and the Champions. Now I have to shuffle through a cafeteria line with men who tried to pass bad checks. Now I have to wonder if there will be chocolate milk in the dispenser. And whether the smartest man in the world has done the smarteset thing he could with his life.

Soon I Will Be Invincible tells it's story from twin first person points of view, one by Dr. Impossible himself, the other by Fatale, a female cyborg recently recruited to the big leagues of superherodom and involved in the search for the newly-yet-again at-large evil genius. It's one part South Park, one part The Incredibles, and one part An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England.

Maybe it's also, through Fatale's story of the traumatized "poor kid" trying to make good, a little bit Veronica Mars. My strongest sense of the book as it unfolded was as a snarky tale of class war clothed in comic book terms. The supervillians are the nerds, the popular kids are the heroes, and the greatest joke of all is that the nerds who read comic books erroneously identify with admire the fantastical stand ins for the same people who reject(ed) them. All their power fantasies lead to the same outcome as their powerless, reviled realities - the geeks get repeatedly stomped on by their social betters, who lead the same high profile, empty and screwed up but still enviable lives...but with super strength and the ability to fly.

Whether uncloseted nerds who never hung out somewhat awkwardly with the cool kids can appreciate this lesson is somewhat doubtful. But they can still enjoy the humor of the book in scenes like the one where Dr. I sneaks into the heroes' lair and reads a dossier on a former associate.

GOALS: GLOBAL DOMINATION; FOUNDATION OF NEO-NILOTIC WORLD-STATE; AUTOREINCARNATION AS RAMSES IV.

I used to yell at him about that lack of ambition, but he didn't seem to care. He was lazy, and he just didn't have much patience for the big picture.

I can relate. Oh, boy, can I relate.

Addendum: Do not read the Amazon reviews if you value your soul. Both the lovers and the haters do so for entirely the wrong reasons. If you mention being a comic book fan you have already failed the exercise. And probably life, as well. Just don't tell me how great the Simpson's Comic Book Guy is or isn't. I don't think I could bear it.

Ready your breakfast and eat hearty... For tonight, we dine in hell!

This is the most horrifying thing I've ever seen lived through. Sob.

Duck Hunter

I somehow doubt the guys investigating this will look like a sniggering dog:

U.S. forces in Qatar accidentally fired a Patriot missile at a farm in the Gulf Arab state but caused no injuries, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

The U.S. military is investigating the missile launch, first reported by Al Jazeera television. The Patriot is an anti-missile system.

"Those things are not supposed to accidentally discharge," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. "It was not supposed to happen."

Temporarily unavailable

I've temporarily taken down my post on the death of Private Fisher. (If you don't care, quit reading.)

Having just emailed some pointed comments to a Private who knew he was violating operational security (OPSEC) by posting an offer to give out inside information to anyone who emailed him, I suppose I should consider myself similarly bound not to share information that is not publicly available until the official report is released to Private Fisher's family. My post contained such information, especially after my last update.

As I explained to the wayward Private, the rules exist to prevent erroneous or incomplete information reaching the family. The Army also necessarily moves slower than individuals with accurate information, and by providing such ahead of official notice we make it look incompetent or uncaring. "I read on this Lieutenant's blog a month ago that X, Y, and Z were screwed up! Why did it taking you so long to tell me the same thing in 50 pages?"

I'll put the post back up in a few months or when I hear the official report has been released, whichever happens first.

Addendum: With the caveat that is from Counterpunch, an article on a pair of deaths and alleged abuses at Fort Sill's Physical Training and Rehabilitation Program for injured initial entry trainees.

He's a man who knows that when you put another man's cock in your mouth, you make a pact

This morning as I huffed and puffed around the three mile track I reminisced about my first day at field artillery school.

Some of our dumber classes are taught by a pair of hilarious and conditionally unprofessional NCOs. They made a big and mostly positive impression during that first basic terms and organizational structure class, but caused me and a few other more mature fellows to squirm when they started in on our international students. One from Columbia was asked if he'd brought any "good stuff" with him, while the gentleman from Saudi Arabia was repeatedly begged for a gas coupon.

I know why they hate us.

I also know the Army has equal opportunity (EO) representatives in every unit who exist to help solve/report/punish any problems of sexual harassment, racism, or similar problems of disrespect or ill-treatment that is ignored by or beyond the control of one's chain of command. Serious EO complaints are supposedly a Very Bad Thing to have to deal with. Two minutes after I had this thought:

And if any of you are thinking about making an EO complaint, SSG D and I are the EO reps for the battalion.

Even I laughed at that. I also remembered that the EO rep at my holding company at OCS was a bit off, albeit in different, more subtle, and more appropriate to the job ways than these two.

Somehow all of this led to me to the belief that we need to get rid of Don't Ask, Don't Tell just so I can be entertained by the idea of men like these dealing with complaints between male heterosexual and homosexual soldiers. The tragicomic possibilities are too much to never see realized. Maybe I'll write the play when I finish my opera.

The dead file

I read Friday that a Private Daniel Fisher died in one of Fort Sill's basic combat training companies on October 4. Details are scarce; all word of mouth added to the published one sentence description of the event was that he was supposedly shot in the stomach. [See Update below.]

Fisher's unit was training on an M-2 .50 caliber machine gun, learning how to load and unload the weapon, when the machine gun discharged, striking Fisher.

If you've ever been on a competently run basic training .50 cal range you know how unlikely this is. At least two events of gross incompetence or deliberate malfeasance had to occur for something like this to happen. It has inspired me to start collecting these sorts of stories for future use; a lot of privates serving under me can expect to write some essays on the life and death of Pvt. Fisher and others like him when they do something stupid concerning weapon safety.

It's an idea that I've had knocking around for a while. Ever since I decided to join the Army my chief pet peeve has been stories of soldiers shot by other soldiers in completely retarded situations. I'm not talking about ordinarily careless friendly fire deaths like what happened to Corporal Tillman but really crass, blatant idiocy.

The first of these I read a couple of years ago concerned an imbecile in Afghanistan who shot a buddy in the head while they were cleaning their rifles. He laid it in his lap and started to disassemble it without clearing the weapon. (Clearing is the process of pulling back the charging handle to eject any rounds in the chamber, visually inspecting the chamber to ensure it is empty, then dry firing the weapon at a safe point on the ground so that any invisible rounds still in there are fired harmlessly.)

A round was still in the weapon, and it made his friend in the same tent a quadriplegic who inspired this nausea-inducing story about how Jesus had helped him come to terms with his partial vegetative state and how he'd really like to engage in correspondence with his shooter to let him know, hey, it's totally cool, bra. Ever since then I've paid special attention to headlines or internal Army stories about this sort of thing. They're certainly frequent; whether they qualify as common in an Army of half a million I can't really say.

The end result of this is that the one area where I thought my senior drill sergeant's rage was neither faked nor excessive concerned trainees who did stupid things with their weapons, whether it be improper clearing procedures, weapons not on safe, or "flagging" (pointing the weapon at) other soldiers on a range. The lesson was driven home so forcefully that my last week at basic I was appalled to see that the new company that had picked up was taught to place their M16s muzzle up leaning on the table next to them at the dining hall where any fool could easily knock it over. We had to wear ours slung uncomfortably barrel down over our back, as a side effect making it pretty uncomfortable to squeeze in between the table and the fixed chair back. I always ate slightly hunched over.

My most personally embarrassing moment at OCS involved bad weapon safety. While waiting to join a class I got loaned out to play opposition force in the field. The second day I took my issued M16, got distracted by a conversation with a squad mate, and dry fired it at the ground without ejecting any rounds or inspecting the chamber. There were not (supposed to be) any live rounds out there and there's no way in hell it should have made it into my hands with a blank still in it, but that wasn't the point. The only reason I didn't actually shake when I realized what I'd done is that I'm at least smart enough to never, ever point it anyone.

From what a buddy tells me about other lieutenant's he knew in BOLC II, the course I've temporarily skipped, that's not generally the case. Plenty of man-children just out of West Point or ROTC programs apparently found it really amusing when they were issued their weapons to point them at each other and say "bang."

I'm sometimes amazed we don't kill more people like Pvt. Fisher. I just hope to god no one I'm responsible for ever does it.

Update: This story claims:

According to Army Officials, the weapon that killed Private Fisher was not supposed to be loaded. The soldiers were doing a familiarization exercise - not a live fire event - but, since the weapon discharged, the gun had to have been loaded. It's being called a "training related incident".

As above, that's two instances of gross incompetence: improperly clearing the weapon after its last use, and allowing anyone to ever stand in front of the muzzle. When we engaged in familiarization we formed a horseshoe around the weapon, leaving a gap at the front.

Update II: Based on information from a moderately amusing source that I won't describe because he's also slightly illicit, the instruction was, unlike mine at Benning, purely a familiarization course that was supposed to use only dummy rounds with no live fire component. So the screw ups seem to have been (1) live rounds introduced to a range where they should not have been present (something I've already personally witnessed once in my few months in the Army), (2) live rounds loaded into the weapon, and (3) failing to treat a weapon as loaded and dangerous at all times, even when you "know" that it's not, by in this instance permitting trainees to stand or kneel in front of the weapon during instruction.

(3) is the only one I can spot being screwed up with a quick visual inspection, sufficient in itself to prevent such accidents, and the one I anticipate being a complete uncompromising asshole about in the future.

It was on that day I put a jihad on them

If someone needs Christmas gift ideas for me, I'd like some night vision goggles and a rusty, jagged edged machete. The fucking Padre Island coyotes finally ate my mom's cat years after I'd decided he was too smart to get caught like all the others. My sister found his paws in the lot across the street.

At least my nights during Christmas break will be less boring and more full of purpose than usual.

But now my life's a nightmare of efficiency

Friday we blew more shit up, this time by calling it in vicariously through our fire support instructor.

Picking your initial direction based on mil¹ differential measured with binoculars off the reference points your previously measured with shaky hands using an M2 compass in a stiff wind - difficult. Using terrain association to pick an initial range when the only terrain features are some barely rolling hills and an inferred intermittent stream - hard. Watching the guy who'd royally screwed up his first several adjusting shots get a direct overhead burst in the fire for effect - priceless.

My days seem likely to settle into a routine of PT from 0530-0630, with either class, field gunnery/fire observation exercise, or simulator time running from 0800-1700. Lunch is usually slightly less than an hour, except for last Friday, when it was about five minutes for those who had thought to bring something against the eventuality of being implicitly ordered to bend over and grab our heels around noontime. I had some beef jerky and Pringles.

Today was our first light day, as we had two blocks of "commandant's time" scheduled. No one has actually explained to us what this entails. I gather, like the side straddle hop, this is a silly military name for a common civilian term, namely study time. In any case, we used up our morning CT making up for the class time we'd missed after being kicked out to rectify our many shortcomings with respect to the inventory of required class materials. Our second block was after our post-lunch exam.

I spent it poorly.

--
¹ - I believe I'm the only one in our platoon, if not class, to independently realize why there are 6400 mils in a (NATO) circle. C = Dπ rounded for the convenience of dumb people operating a less than precise fire system. At a distance of 1km, a one mil lateral correction is approximately 1m.

Consolation prize

If the Army hadn't taken me, at least I would have had this.

War memorials usually honor those who served and died in violent conflicts. A memorial set to go on display in a central London art fair this coming Thursday, though, is intended to honor those willing but unable to serve in the Iraq war. Yes, that's right: willing but unable to serve.

The memorial features Britain's Prince Harry, who was supposed to be deployed to Iraq but ended up not being able to go because of specific threats made against him as a high-value target. The statue of Harry shows him lying dead in front of the British flag, with his head resting on a Bible and pennies covering his eyes. A desert vulture is perched on his boot. He will be earless, in line with threats from militia leaders who said they would send him back to his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, "without his ears." (Curiously, photos of the statue show it with ears, so perhaps they haven't been removed yet? Regardless, a bronze casting of the severed ears will be auctioned on eBay.)

And it summarizes something, although you don't know what it is, like loneliness or longing for a future perfect kiss

Some number of Saturdays ago I witnessed one of the five seriously attractive women in Lawton, Oklahoma. By Houston nightclub standards she wasn't anything outrageously special, maybe a 9.1 face atop a 9.6 body.

But. Oh. My. God. The. Dress.

Certain aesthetic experiences of the feminine persuasion leave a mark on the properly reflective male soul, leading them to set up websites or make movies. This girl, in this dress, in this location deserves at least a poignantly tragic opera made infamous by its composer's frustrated-passion-induced suicide, but lacking any musical talent or good reason to kill myself at present, I'll have to do with this blog post.

She was slender, small breasted, walking on nearly perfect legs, with a pleasantly pretty but unremarkable face crowned by bronze hair in a rather adorable red ribboned twist. If I'd seen her in normal circumstances I would have given her a second or third look and not remembered her an hour later.

But in no normal circumstances does a woman wear a sheer satiny/lacey confection the color of blood mixed with wine and the length of sin trying to sneak in the church door. (The red and white polka dot platform shoes were kind of cute, too.) One certainly doesn't expect to see it at 12:30 pm on a Saturday at the back of a Hastings in Lawton.

I wish I could describe in detail the subtle patterns that seemed layered on to the dress, or how the bodice was cut, or whether she was likely to be wearing anything underneath it. But really the dress doesn't signify much more than the girl. If I'd seen it on a plain woman, I would have dismissed it as a very nice brand of lipstick on a pig. If I'd seen it on a perfect sexpot, I would have (figuratively, alas) obliviously looked through the dress at the goddess beneath.

But for a guy who dislikes hair coloring, more than subtle makeup, and other forms of artifice, there's something magical and sublime about a pretty girl in a fantastic dress that creates some strange gestalt of loveliness and mystery whose whole is so vastly greater than the sum of its parts. Who was she? What occasion on an early Saturday called for such a thing? Why on earth was she wearing it, however briefly, for a walk through the religious aisle of a not very nice books/CD/DVD chain?

I'll never know. When I stumbled home hours later my roommates wondered why I (still) had a dazed expression on my face. I had a hard time explaining why I didn't say something to her, offer her some compliment or comment. Beyond the fact that I never, ever do such a thing, which always strikes me as the grossest form of imposition on a woman who should be able to go about her business without be accosted by every admiring man she encounters, I certainly wouldn't have done so in this case. Myths, like humankind, cannot bear too much reality. I'd much rather keep my melancholy ignorance, thank you very much.

All of which is a very long winded and somewhat indirect way of saying that I am reasonably sure Italian Girl is married, has been for some time, and for some inexplicable reason didn't see fit to mention this fact when I saw her a couple of months ago.

Given her usual pattern of ignoring me for months after every meeting and the (post-coworker phase) unprecedented experience of three very long such encounters over my post-OCS leave, I'm not due to hear from her next until perhaps June 2008. But desiring to discover whether she'd returned alive from her early September trip to Africa, I did some creative googling and discovered the surprisingly comprehensive photo gallery of the monthly techno dance party that her husband(!?) co-founded years ago.

That led to me a picture in the June gallery of them embracing with a very prominent wedding band displayed on his hand. Further googling uncovered a myspace page (I'm not so far gone as to link that) for the husband (!?) where he describes himself as "married" and a friend's comments make reference to the "wifey" returning from the Africa trip. Another semi-ambiguous comment notes: "Hey, working on wedding trip photos... can't seem to download yours and [Italian Girl's]."

I'm reminded of an occasion about five years ago when she lied to me at work about what she'd done that weekend. I knew from a casual comment of her roommate, who also worked there, that she'd gone to Chicago to see her quasi-ex boyfriend. The only reasons I could imagine for such behavior were (1) she was crazy, (2) she thought I was ????, (3) profit. I can only imagine some similar "thought" process was at work here, leavened by the fact I've suspected since picking up his vibe when I picked up the cat years ago, further strengthened by this, that she's not really supposed to see me anymore.

Naturally, Italian Girl just called for the first time in months and interrupted with an hour and a half conversation, mostly to ask my advice on how to deal with her crazy mother who she would like to stop hating. Interesting factoid: IG alleged her boyfriend is somewhat intimidated by me because I'm taller, more confident, and sexier than he expected from someone who has lusted impotently after his girlfriend for so many years.

As far as I know (not very) he still commutes to San Antonio on weekdays, so hiding me from him, if that's what she did, wouldn't have been very difficult. I do wonder where she put her ring, though. I definitely would have noticed it when I held her hands across the table that time. I will say, though, that not all my surprises during this bit of internet sleuthing were unpleasant. While I loved the long hair, I quite like the short, as well.

Hmmm. Does anyone know a good course on opera composition?

Addendum: I had some years past expressed this opinion regarding the more or less inevitable event, but I'm quite sure simple notification was not even implicitly discouraged, let alone forbidden.

A: Boom! Boom!

Every time I'm inclined to feel guilty about my life of sloth during lulls in training or on the many three and four day holidays we get that normal people don't, I remind myself that the Army gets much of it back on the hectic days and will collect plenty of interest when I presumably deploy next year.

And how. My first week of field artillery training has been amazingly hectic. Classes are long enough, but there has been plenty of extra first week crap dropped on us at the last opportunity to get it done. ("You'd better have your rank and name sewn on your helmet cover and band when we go to the field tomorrow. The relevant places that will do it close in less than three hours, plenty of time if you don't run any personal errands, eat dinner, or go home and change. Assuming the one convenient seller doesn't run out of the necessary materials, all 80 of you will need to disperse among the places offering labor. Run, monkeys! Run!")

We also have extra obligations, including tomorrow's 0530 briefing on Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, as a result of a classmate who got himself fatally run over last Friday night. Many of the West Pointers knew him, a few well. I never saw his face or heard his name during the one day of inprocessing we both attended. The sum of his life seems to have been that playing lots of rugby gets you bad grades but leaves you remembered as a cool guy, and while deciding not to drive home at 0230 when you're drunk is a good idea, walking down the middle of the 50 mph divided four laner...not so much. I suspect my own sudden demise might lead to a more interesting epitaph or lesson, but the odds of the relevant people being around to convey it are pretty low.

But today was fairly interesting and relatively relaxed as we got to go to the field and blow shit up, if by "shit" you mean "a large empty grassy slope about 4k away." It was somewhat anticlimactic, as we only get to use here the 105mm "popgun," not the big 155s with the shells more than three times as massive. The time fused air bursts at the end were kind of cool, though, and I didn't disgrace myself during my time as the radio telephone operator.

I would blog more, but I have vague memories of what it's like to get a full five hours of sleep. I'd like to see if they are accurate.

Should five per cent appear too small, be thankful I don't take it all

Will Wilkinson points out the surprising to me news that pre-tax income inequality is pretty similar to some big social democratic European states.

While the U.S. pre-tax Gini is still on the high side of the median of these 16 OECD countries, it is remarkable how much differences in tax and transfer policies push the U.S. to the top in inequality in disposable income. This is striking to me because, at a glance, it suggests that the U.S. is not all that distinctive in the way the basic structure of the economy affects the distribution of market income. Unions in Germany and the U.K. are rather more powerful than in the U.S., but (again, at a glance) appear to do nothing to reduce inequality relative to the U.S.

Back to school

My October 4th class having been oversubscribed, I've instead been put early into my Field Artillery Officer Basic Course, where I'll be learning how to blow stuff up from a distance for the next few months.