Quotulatiousness

January 26, 2010

When politicians get too close to the sharp end, militarily speaking

Filed under: Government, Military, Politics, USA, Weapons — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:42

This is a good example of why it’s a bad idea to allow politicians to get too deeply involved in military acquisition and logistics:

The U.S. Army wants to use more precision “smart” weapons. To that end they have replaced unguided MLRS (227mm) rockets with a GPS guided one. There is now a very popular GPS guided 155mm artillery shell in use. Laser guided Hellfire missiles are widely used by helicopter gunships. But there’s still one unguided “dumb” weapon that the army just can’t seem to get away from; their unguided 70mm (2.75 inch) rockets. Back in 2003, the army planned to begin phasing out these rockets. But, instead, during the last five years, the army has purchased nearly a billion dollars worth of 70mm rockets. Not because they wanted to, but because the politicians from Vermont, where the rocket is manufactured, had enough clout to force the army buy over 100,000 70mm rockets they don’t want, won’t use, and will eventually have to dispose of. That last step will cost more money, unless they can find some foreign country that wants to buy them, cheap.

I guess the plant that produces them is in a district represented by a member of a powerful committee in Washington.

CF improve medical evacuation by adding medical technicians to crews

Filed under: Cancon, Health, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:35

Strategy Page reports on a change in crew composition for Canadian Forces medical evacuation helicopters:

Canadian forces have added a medical technician to the crews of their medical evacuation helicopters, joining a trend that has played a part in saving the lives of many troops wounded in combat, or injured in a combat zone. Previously, Canadian troops had relied on American, or other NATO, air evacuation services. But now Canada has suitable helicopters (CH-146s) for that work, and established an air ambulance service. Following a four year old recommendation by their own military planners, Canada trained medical technicians to work on the medevac choppers, and thus increase the chances that badly wounded soldiers would survive. Canada has also upgraded all of its combat medical care during its years of operations in Afghanistan. This is part of a trend that has been going on since World War II. It’s all about having more medical care available sooner.

The fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has brought about a major change in how the United States deals with combat casualties. The result is that over 90 percent of the troops wounded, survive their wounds. That’s the highest rate in history. There are several reasons for this. The main one is that medics, and the troops themselves, are being trained to deliver more complex, and effective first aid more quickly. Military doctors now talk of the “platinum 10 minutes,” meaning that if you can keep the wounded soldier, especially the ones who are hurt real bad, alive for ten minutes, their chances of survival go way up. Medics have been equipped and trained to perform procedures previously done only by physicians, while troops are trained to do some procedures previously handled only by medics.

“Involvement in counter-espionage cases induces in some a form of paranoia”

Filed under: Britain, History — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:19

Gordon Corera briefly looks at the KGB penetration of Britain’s intelligence agencies:

For 30 years Stephen De Mowbray has maintained a self-imposed silence on a career that once took him to the heart of one of British intelligence’s most controversial episodes.

In 1979 he quit his job with the Secret Service (MI5) because he believed officials had failed to take seriously the claim that British intelligence had been further penetrated by its enemy — the Soviet Union’s KGB.

A number of spies had been discovered in the 1960s but De Mowbray believed there were more. But he found no-one at the top willing to listen.

“People thought I was either mad or bad because I was trying to do something,” he says of that time.

Three decades later, De Mowbray decided to tell his side of the story after reading the authorised history of the Security Service, published last October.

I’m currently reading Christopher Andrew’s Defence of the Realm and just got to the start of the relevant section the other night. Between De Mowbray’s concerns and the careful concealment of “The Laundry”1 in the coverage so far, it’s a wonder they managed to find enough that was considered safe to release to the public.

If you’re interested, MI5 discusses their policies on information disclosure here.

1 I kid, I kid. “The Laundry” is the fictional department of British intelligence in The Atrocity Archive and The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross.

January 25, 2010

Top SF/Fantasy works

Filed under: Books, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:21

Tyler Cowen linked to Alex Carnevale’s top 100 SF&F works, which has some odd choices (Jack Vance and Ursula K. LeGuin appear to have been the compiler’s favourite authors). In the comments to Tyler’s post, an alternate (unannotated) list by David Pringle was recommended. Pringle’s list doesn’t include Fantasy books, so there’s less overlap between the two than you might expect.

No list of this kind is, or can be, truly authoritative, but there are some common items on each list I can’t criticize as being in the top of the field:

  • The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein. Carnevale has this at #2. Pringle doesn’t list it, but has several other (in my opinion, lesser) Heinlein works on his list. This is one of the best libertarian SF novels ever. Even if you’re not over-fond of his work, this short novel is well worth reading.
  • Frankenstein Mary Shelley. This book made #6 for Carnevale, but didn’t make Pringle’s list. I read this when I was 12, and it made quite an impression on me, although I have to admit I like it much more now than I did on first reading it.
  • Dune, Frank Herbert. Carnevale likes it much more than Pringle (#11 versus #48). I liked the original book, but lost interest sometime later in the series.
  • The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien. Not the original fantasy work, but probably the most common source for inspiration (and verging-on-outright-plagiarism) for an entire sub-field of Fantasy.
  • Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein. One of the most subversive books ever published, at least as far as the middle class of the 1960’s was concerned. On the surface, it’s the story of a Martian named Smith. It seems to be one of those books you either love or hate — not much middle ground here.
  • Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll. Pair this with Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass for the full effect. Another author whose work has been strip-mined for ideas by later writers.
  • 1984 by George Orwell. Pringle’s #1 pick and Carnevale’s #26. I’d certainly put it in my top ten.
  • Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury. This book made both lists (#8 for Pringle,#27 for Carnevale), but I’m afraid I’ve never read it (I tried a couple of Bradbury books when I was in my early teens, but never warmed to him as an author).
  • The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick. Another book that made both lists, but which I haven’t read, and for similar reasons. Early experiences with an author’s work can have long-lasting effects.
  • A Fire upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. A book that appeals to both fans of the huge stage of deep space and aficionados of the early Internet.
  • Citizen of the Galaxy, Robert Heinlein. One of the very best “young adult” SF novels from before they called them that. Both a coming of age novel and a condemnation of slavery and hypocrisy. Powerful stuff for young minds.
  • Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein. Another great polarizer: it’s either the best military SF novel ever written or the worst piece of hyper-Fascist propaganda ever written. It’s interesting that Heinlein wrote this book at about the same time as he was working on Stranger. Readers who only knew about the one work might have suffered severe mental whiplash to find he’d written the other one, too. Either way, pretend that the film never happened (aside from the names, it doesn’t have much to do with the novel).
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams. You want whimsical? HHG took whimsy to a whole different level. What Terry Pratchett did with Fantasy, Adams did with SF.
  • Animal Farm, George Orwell. A book that suffers from being pushed on high school students as mandatory reading. The revolution on the farm, and the aftermath.
  • The Baroque Cycle, Neal Stephenson. A huge four-volume work that repays the effort to work through. Some authors work best at a certain length (short story, novella, novel, etc.). Stephenson seems to work best at the library-shelf level.
  • Ringworld, Larry Niven. I wouldn’t call this a top-ten, but the series of books in this series certainly belong in the top 100.
  • A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller. Post-apocalyptic done well.
  • Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson. Certainly one of the most entertaining books I’ve ever read (it helped that I was working in the computer industry at the time). From Stephenson’s earlier less-than-library-shelf-length period.
  • The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham. A book I had to read in middle school, yet one I still recall with great affection. Few books can survive being forced down kids’ throats. This one can.
  • Memory, Mirror Dance, and A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold. I had trouble stopping at just three of Bujold’s “Vorkosigan” series, as they’re all highly entertaining and deeply engaging. Some call it space opera, but it’s far more involved and well-executed than that easy label would indicate. One of the very best SF authors ever. Her more recent work is predominantly Fantasy, and while they’re very good, I’m more interested in her SF writing.
  • The Atrocity Archive and The Jennifer Morgue, Charles Stross. Imagine if the British secret service had an even more eldritch secret service component. But run strictly according to civil service rules.
  • Pyramids, Men at Arms, Interesting Times, and The Wee Free Men, Terry Pratchett. Another author for whom it is difficult to select even a few examples (they’re all so good). His Discworld series started as a simple pastiche of typical swords-and-sorcery novels, but which quickly outgrew the confines of the first few books. The Wee Free Men is the first of a series of Young Adult novels for the Discworld (including A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith and the forthcoming I Shall Wear Midnight).
  • Old Man’s War, John Scalzi. Another military SF story, but so well thought-out and executed as to transcend the ordinary levels of the sub-genre. Follow-on works are equally good (The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, and Zoe’s Tale).
  • Island in the Sea of Time, S.M. Stirling. Another time-travel story, but avoiding the usual pitfalls of time travel story lines (the secret was to go back before written history…). This was the first book of a trilogy. Stirling is currently completing a related series of stories hinging on what happened to the world left behind in the original trilogy (starting with Dies the Fire).
  • The Probability Broach, L. Neil Smith. More interesting (and amusing) ideas per page than any other novel of its era. Another libertarian book, but don’t let the label scare you off: great reading.

What’s that? No Clarke? No Asimov? No Sturgeon? No Card? No Zelazny? No Brunner? Not in the top whatever-number-I-stopped-at. Each has strong fans, and some good work, but not top-rank in my view.

The Tiger Woods effect hits the PGA in the pocketbook

Filed under: Media, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:36

Tiger Woods may be invisible at the moment, but the public reaction to his troubles appears to be contributing to further financial trouble for the PGA:

The troubles facing the professional-golf tour without Tiger Woods will be on display when the annual tournament tees off at the Torrey Pines course in San Diego this week: Ticket sales are down, fewer hospitality tents have been sold, and the title sponsor had to be lured with a cut-rate price.

It is a harbinger of what the PGA Tour may be without its most popular player. Three of the Tour’s 46 tournaments scheduled for 2010 don’t have a lead corporate sponsor, nor do 13 of next year’s tournaments. Television viewership of the first two events of this year’s Tour tumbled.

In past years, Mr. Woods, the game’s most popular player, usually skipped the first three tournaments and began play on the San Diego tournament’s seaside course, perched on scenic cliffs overlooking the Pacific. As Mr. Woods’s opener, San Diego became one of the highest-profile early events of each PGA Tour season. This year, Mr. Woods, caught up in a sex scandal, is on leave from the game, with no word on when he will return. Without his unmatched star power, the value of Tour sponsorships, through which companies cover most tournament prizes, could be sharply lower. And without a rich flow of cash from those sponsorships, the PGA Tour’s economic model is cracked.

This shows the danger inherent in having a single, iconic representative. If the icon stumbles, it has a severe knock-on effect.

Vikings dominant in all categories, except the most important one

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:04

Minnesota looked great in the stat sheet: total yards — 475 yards to 257, passing — 310 yards to 189 and rushing 165 to the Saints’ 68. But there was one big number they couldn’t overcome: turnovers. It was as if someone had greased the football, with Adrian Peterson fumbling twice (once on the Saints’ goal line) and recovering a third. Even Percy Harvin let one get away from him, while Brett Favre was picked off twice (once to kill the Vikings’ best chance to win in regulation time). The Saints, by comparison, played almost turnover free, except for a bad decision on fielding a punt by Reggie Bush.

Brett Favre took a beating, as Saints defenders took every opportunity to hit him (only drawing a penalty once for a flagrant hit). Near the end of the third quarter, Favre was so slow getting up again that it appeared he’d be leaving the game. After having his ankle examined and re-taped, Favre re-entered the game on the next series. He must have been quite emphatic about it with the coaches, as backup Tarvaris Jackson didn’t even start warming up.

Chip Scoggins talked with Adrian Peterson after the game:

Adrian Peterson came out of the locker room — still dressed in full uniform — to watch the New Orleans Saints celebrate their first trip to the Super Bowl. As fans cheered, confetti fell and the Saints gathered on a stage at midfield, Peterson stood silent and watched the scene from the tunnel.

“It was painful,” he said. “Especially the way the game ended. Our guys fought hard and I honestly feel like we just gave the game away. Too many turnovers. It came back at the end to bite us.”
Peterson had a hand in that. Though he finally rushed for 100 yards and scored three touchdowns, Peterson also fumbled two times and took responsibility for the botched handoff at the end of the first half.

Peterson finished with 122 yards rushing on 25 carries, ending a streak of eight games without reaching the 100-yard mark. But his performance was marred by his fumbles and he admitted afterward that he started thinking too much about his mistakes.

“After the first one close to the goal line, I let it play in my head too much,” he said. “I came out the second half and was thinking about it too much. I had to get my mind back focused and not thinking about it when I was out there.”

Peterson’s fumbling problem became a major issue in his third season. He fumbled seven times, losing six of them in the regular season. He said he will spend the offseason trying to solve it.

January 24, 2010

The only surprise about this is that they’re admitting it

Filed under: Environment, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 15:41

Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn’t been verified:

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’

It was unverified, but so important that they couldn’t hold back? It would be funny, if trillions of dollars were not being forcibly redirected in useless, futile “green” directions, and the lives of billions of people may be negatively impacted by government and UN mandates on unproven technologies to curb global warming.

Canadian infantry to get new personal equipment

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:25

Strategy Page reports that the Canadian Forces will be introducing new equipment for infantry soldiers next year:

Canada is joining its NATO allies in providing its infantry with new basic equipment, including electronic gear that, until quite recently, no one saw the troops getting for a decade or more. The Canadian gear set is called ISSP (Integrated Soldier System Project). The first components of ISSP will be issued next year. ISSP contains the usual elements of improved infantry gear. New uniforms, that incorporate improvements the troops have been demanding for years, plus new helmets and protective vests, that are lighter and provide improved shielding from bullets and fragments. New communications gear gives each soldier a link with everyone in his unit, while individual GPS is something troops have already provided for themselves. As other armies have discovered, the troops have already bought a lot of the new gear that is now proposed for the new standard issue.

A lot of this new stuff is commercial, with the military taking the best and most appropriate gear designed for outdoor living. This is particularly true of stuff marketed to the demanding mountain climbing and winter sports enthusiasts. Canada isn’t plunging into unknown territory here. The U.S., France, Germany and most other major NATO countries have already gone this route, and left a lot of practical experience in their wake. Thus the major goal is to get all the most useful gear, and reduce the weight of stuff the infantry have to carry into combat. It’s much easier to find new gear that works better, than it is to find stuff that’s lighter, and still gets the job done.

This is very good news, although there’s always a trade-off between “useful stuff to have” and “weight to be carried”. Modern computer gear is far lighter than it used to be, except for batteries, but there’s always the temptation on the part of the planners to add “just one more” neat bit of kit to the burden already being humped across the field by the infantry.

There’s also the challenge of making the technology both useful and as non-distracting as possible. As Robert Heinlein wrote back in the late 1950’s, “If you load a mudfoot down with a lot of gadgets he has to watch somebody a lot more simply equipped — say with a stone axe — will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a Vernier.”

January 23, 2010

Slate peeks at Barack Obama’s Facebook feed

Filed under: Humour, Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 17:09

I thought Facebook had fixed the privacy settings, but Slate manages to show President Obama’s Facebook feed:

January 22, 2010

British law enforcement moves on bomb detector scam

Filed under: Britain, Law, Middle East — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 16:03

Well, it’s nice to see that sometimes the British government can move quickly on something. As reported on the BBC program Newsnight, a bogus bomb detector has been selling briskly in Iraq (link here). The lead scammer has been arrested today:

The managing director of a British company that has been selling bomb-detecting equipment to security forces in Iraq was arrested on suspicion of fraud today.

At the same time, the British government announced that it was imposing a ban on the export of the ADE-651 detectors because it was concerned they could put the lives of British forces or other friendly forces at risk.

The government promised to help investigate the multimillion-pound deal between the company, ATSC, and the security forces in Iraq.

Iraq has invested more than £50m in buying the devices and training people to use them. Police and military personnel have used them to search vehicles and pedestrians for explosives. But concerns over their effectiveness — and fears they could put lives at risk — have been raised.

Avon and Somerset police officers arrested Jim McCormick, 53, on suspicion of fraud by misrepresentation. A spokesman said: “We are conducting a criminal investigation and, as part of that, a 53-year-old man has been arrested.

London in the 1960s

Filed under: Britain, History — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:26

I’m not from London, but the England I grew up in looked very similar to the typical street scenes here (except I grew up in Middlesbrough, so imagine looking at these scenes through a dark gray filter): Wasleso’s London 1960s slideshow.

There should be a special hell for this scam artist

Filed under: Britain, Middle East, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:36

A report from the BBC on a “bomb detection device” widely sold in the Middle East, which does nothing at all:

A BBC Newsnight investigation has found that a so-called “bomb detector”, thousands of which have been sold to Iraq, cannot possibly work.

Leading explosives expert Sidney Alford told Newsnight the sale of the ADE-651 was “absolutely immoral”.

“This type of equipment does not work,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind betting that lives have been lost as a consequence.”

Questions have been raised over the ADE-651, following three recent co-ordinated waves of bombings in Baghdad.

It sounds like the ADE-651 is a combination of tech-look crap and new age marketing crap:

Iraq has bought thousands of the detectors for a total of $85m (£52m).

The device is sold by Jim McCormick, based at offices in rural Somerset, UK.

The ADE-651 detector has never been shown to work in a scientific test.

There are no batteries and it consists of a swivelling aerial mounted to a hinge on a hand-grip. Critics have likened it to a glorified dowsing rod.

And if that’s not enough whiff of flim-flam for you, how about this claim?

The training manual for the device says it can even, with the right card, detect elephants, humans and 100 dollar bills.

Update: The Guardian reports that the managing director of the firm has been arrested today.

On the fight card today, RAF versus RN

Filed under: Britain, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:54

No matter what the outcome of the next British general election, the military situation is going to be near the top of the agenda for the incoming government. Britain’s army is stretched very thin with overseas obligations, while the RN and the RAF are at daggers drawn over the future of British carrier aircraft. The RAF would love to sink the navy’s carrier plans, as it would free up huge amounts of budget room for them to buy new toys for themselves (if there are no carriers, there’s no need to buy carrier aircraft, which are much more expensive than similar non-maritime planes). If the RAF succeeds, the army would prefer more money for troops on the ground, helicopters, and unmanned drones. The Economist provides a state-of-play summary:

Even in a great seafaring nation, the remorseless logic of austerity forces admirals to plead for their budgets. It has long been clear that fixing the fiscal crisis would mean taking money from the already cash-strapped Ministry of Defence. Where to make the cuts is something military chiefs have started to argue about in public.

On January 19th Sir Mark Stanhope, Britain’s top admiral, defended long-standing plans to build two expensive new aircraft carriers. The country is bogged down now in an Afghan ground war, he said, but future conflicts may require projecting power by sea. Britain has flirted with phasing out its carriers before, only for the Falklands war to prove their indispensability.

The day before, Sir Mark’s opposite number in the army, Sir David Richards, said that Britain’s agonies in Afghanistan showed the need for more helicopters and unmanned drones, and for better-equipped troops. An “impressive” amount of this gear could be bought if money were redirected from expensive equipment intended for big state-on-state wars; the risk of such conflicts was small enough to be dealt with through NATO (ie, America). Though Sir Richard did not say carriers should be cut (he offered to get rid of some army tanks), they are an obvious target.

It has been an aspect of all British governments since 1945 to take on additional responsibilities while constantly looking for economies in the military budget. Neither the Conservative opposition nor the current Labour government wants to take the political heat for increased military spending (that’s not even in consideration: the debate is over how deep the cuts must be). During a recession, it’s understandable that the politicians would take this kind of stance, but this is true regardless of the state of the economy.

January 21, 2010

Obama’s move to throttle the big banks

Filed under: Economics, Government, Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:18

Megan McArdle takes a first look at the Obama administration’s new initiative to control the big banks:

The administration’s new proposal has two core pieces, both of which are at least somewhat novel. First, banks that have access to the discount window will not be able to trade for their own account. That means no prop trading desk. No owning hedge funds or private equity funds. No investments of any kind to make profits for your shareholders. Financial institutions can make profits by servicing clients, or they can make profits by investing for their own book. But they can’t do both.

Senior administration officials I spoke to made it clear that this would not include market making activity, which the administration views as something you do for your clients. But while that may partially reassure banks, that seems to mean that market makers — i.e. Goldman Sachs — are very definitely included. That impression was reinforced by the way Indeed, if they pass this thing, they should probably call it the Hey Goldman Sachs! You’re Not Going to Be So Profitable Any More Act of 2010.

And yet more on passwords

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:11

This is becoming a quarterly topic around here. Imperva has done some statistical analysis of the 32 million passwords which were exposed in the Rockyou.com security breach:

Key findings of the study include:

* The shortness and simplicity of passwords means many users select credentials that will make them susceptible to basic forms of cyber attacks known as “brute force attacks.”

* Nearly 50% of users used names, slang words, dictionary words or trivial passwords (consecutive digits, adjacent keyboard keys, and so on). The most common password is “123456”.

* Recommendations for users and administrators for choosing strong passwords.

“Everyone needs to understand what the combination of poor passwords means in today’s world of automated cyber attacks: with only minimal effort, a hacker can gain access to one new account every second—or 1000 accounts every 17 minutes,” explained Imperva’s CTO Amichai Shulman.

The report identifies the most commonly used passwords:

1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123

So there you go — all the tools you need to be a world-class password cracker.

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