Bill Whittle over at Eject!Eject!Eject! has a great essay about John Boyd and the OODA loop and how it applies to competitive decision-making in almost any sphere (mostly war).
Iowahawk (caution-language) had an interesting satire on a New York Times piece. Actually, any satire by Iowahawk is practically by-definition "interesting." I’m starting to wonder if anyone actually takes the Times seriously anymore?
I’m not really sure what’s more ridiculous: Taser parties (a lá Tupperware parties), or Amnesty International’s position on the non-lethal devices.
Because of safety concerns and potential for abuse, we do not believe Tasers should ever be used as a low or medium level force option by police officers. Nor should they be permitted for sale to the general public.
As soon as everyone gets a 24/7 armed bodyguard contingent from AI, they can then take positions like this with some credibility. AI does not have the right to declare that I don’t have the right to defend my family and myself with force I deem appropriate for the situation.
AI needs to stop picking the low-hanging fruit in the western world and concentrate fully on the serious problems in places like Darfur, Zimbabwe, Iran, and North Korea before it moves on to other slightly less serious problem areas like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and China.
*Update* From Hobbes’ The Leviathan:
And therefore there be some rights which no man can be understood by any words, or other signs, to have abandoned or transferred. . . A covenant not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void.
When I was about 20 years old, a car drove by that had a bumper sticker that said "Wouldn’t it be nice if the schools had all the money they needed and the Air Force had to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber?" I remember wishing I were in a bomber at that moment so I could drop one on the car attached to that bumper (which by the way was a much better car than anything I’d ever driven up to that point in my short life).
Never mind the constitutional ignorance of the owner of the bumper sticker. In very general terms, the federal government is responsible for national defense and for raising an army and a navy (and in modern parlance, an air and space force). The states are responsible for public education. It might be nice if everyone had all the money they needed, but economics being what they are, we have political constraints on who gets to choose to allocate scarce resources. In order for the car owner’s fantasy to be fulfilled, he or she would need to ensure people elected to federal government would reduce defense spending and reduce taxes so that states and municipalities could then raise local taxes to give the schools more money. I would then argue that while money is important, it’s not everything; when I was a substitute teacher back in the days I saw that bumper sticker, the schools I helped in needed discipline more than dollars. Discipline is relatively free of cost, it just requires one or two teachers to stay late or on Saturday to monitor students in detention. In retrospect I would have liked to have pointed all this out to the owner of the bumper sticker, but alas, the car didn’t stop and the owner didn’t jump out in order to strike up a political conversation with a dissheveled 20-year old wearing a cotton zip-up jogging sweatshirt colored to match his alma mater high school who aspired to fly anything for the Air Force, even a bomber.
Fast forward to yesterday, when I was standing at a table in the foyer of the Commissary with a couple of other volunteer Boy and Cub Scouts and their parents. . . hosting a bake sale. At an Air Force Base. At which I fly jets that carry bombs.
The really scary thing is that my wife made me give that sweatshirt away to the needy a couple years ago, and if she hadn’t, I’d still have that sweatshirt!
The bake sale was actually for the local Order of the Arrow section. Surprisingly, the OA got some help from one of the local Cub Scout Packs. This was a really good thing; someone pointed out that Commissary patrons were more likely to be unable to say no to a Cub Scout asking if they’d like to buy a treat than they would to a teenager or an adult. This turned out to be largely true. So next time the Cub Scouts need help setting up their Pinewood Derby, it looks like OA is going to have to do the heavy lifting! Rightly so, of course.
Another couple lessons we learned (actually, I was probably the only one there who had never run a bake sale before and therefore was probably the only one who didn’t know this) was that the Japanese love to buy whole American cakes (9"x9" seems to be the preferred size). However, the bulk of Commissary patrons are not Japanese, they’re American. Americans would rather buy cookies or brownies at a bake sale; they’re simply looking for a snack. The Japanese folks are looking for a big treat to take home to their entire family; the Americans aren’t really even looking for something to eat, they’re mostly just helping out what they consider a worthy cause. The first lesson then was to know who your target market will be, and talk to the folks who will be baking the snacks to ensure they’ll bake something that will sell. We did pretty well, but we ended the day with about six out of twelve cakes leftover.
A second lesson could be drawn from the type of baked goods needed for sale. We had several people make their favorite type of cake, brownies, or pie. These didn’t sell very well. What sold best were plain ol’ chocolate-chip cookies, then other types of cookies, then plain chocolate fudge. I’d like to explain this by way of a real estate analogy. Stay with me, it really applies! Say you’re in the market to buy a house. Two houses, actually. One house will be the one you want to live in. You’ve always wanted a two-story Victorian with a huge porch, an in-ground swimming pool, a jacuzzi, a four-car garage, and an atrium. The other house will be one to rent out. So when you go shopping for the houses, you would buy one Victorian with everything you always wanted, and one plain ol’ three bedroom, 1.5 bath ranch house with a minimally furnished basement. You wouldn’t buy a second Victorian. Why not? It’d never rent (at least not in a neighborhood where the prospective tenants are looking for the area with the best schools). The simple fact is the Joe and Jane Renter family is not looking for your dream house. By the same token, the target market for your bake sale is like the Joe and Jane Renter family; they may find cheesecake-covered brownies too rich or too esoteric for their tastes. They just strolled by on their way to the Commissary from the Food Court and were not expecting to see a bunch of Scouts selling baked goods. They’re just going to want something relatively small, simple, and tasty.
One pleasant surprise was the number of people who walked by, handed us money, but refused to take a treat. I figured one or two people might do that (and I figured they’d be the parents of the Scouts). I didn’t keep count, but it was actually probably close to one out of every 10 people that did that. By the end of the day, I was practically begging some of these generous donors to please take something, we were running out of time and didn’t want to take the baked goods home with us if we could avoid it. As I mentioned, we ended up taking home many of the cakes and some of the brownies.
I’d just like to say a quick "Thank you" to the Scouts and their families who participated and made it a successful sale; and also to the local community of people who enjoy tasty baked goods and don’t mind forking over more than a few pennies per item!
I’ve only got one question for everyone: Is it just me, or do most people write up a six-page after-action report after they’ve held a bake sale (and then publish selected revisions on their web logs)?
If you happen to be in the Pacific NW in late Oct/early Nov and like to write on the Internet, Anwyn‘ll be hosting a Blogofogorama in a couple weeks. I hear the main topic will be Saint Peters’ historic defeat of the Islamic Fundamentalist Balrog on the bridge of Lepanto-dûm. Or something like that. [Wow. . . how un-PC of me! --ed]
I wish I could get there! Methinks my wife and newborn wouldn’t so much appreciate Dad taking off just now.
Cox & Forkum just announced they’ll be ceasing they’re regular editorial cartooning. Thanks for the laughs for the past six or so years, guys! Message From Above is hanging in my office directly over my computer. I hope you’ll continue the September Eleventh posts every year, too.
I guess this means I’ll have to actually save Day by Day as a ‘favorite’ now instead of navigating there from C&F.
From FoxNews.com (who else!?): A five-year old took down a rabid fox and kept it from attacking six other kids. Nice going, Rayshun!
What’s a blog without a reference to Chuck Norris?
This is kind of funny: Chuck Norris for President [hat tip to Uncle Dan].
Hannity & Colmes followed Countdown on AFN News this morning. Their first guest was Army Lt Col Ralph Peters (ret). I agree with almost everything Col Peters says, except that he thinks the Air Force should be disbanded, with the strategic assets going to the Navy and the tactical assets going to the Army (see his recent book New Glory).
Col Peters writes extensively and can be seen in USA Today, the New York Post, and RealClearPolitics.com, in addition to his books.
Col Peters isn’t just controversial with his views on the Air Force. The Bundeswehr pulled out of the 2004 Land Warfare Expo because of his famous criticism of the European (and especially German) defense establishment. My friend Paul and I met him there. He explained to Paul that perhaps his criticism struck too close to home, and the Bundeswehr’s absence was proof he was right. He was a little surprised when I told him I’d read his first book, Red Army; he told me that that was actually based on a script for a large-scale command post exercise back in the 1980s. He thanked both of us for our service (Paul actually spent an entire 15 months in Iraq, compared to my nearly negligible 32 days). It’s always nice to be thanked, though!
Thank God for Fox News. Otherwise, I’d go insane from having to run the political-left-brain filter all the time.
Here’s a good read from Eject! Eject! Eject!