Of Anthropologists, peaceniks, academics, troops and updates

First a scheduling note. I'm going to be GoH at TusCon in Tucson in early November. So all you people who are complaining I only do east and west coast... I hit somewhere in the middle!
:-)

General stuff. As the weather cools, work gets done. I started the next Special Circumstances, found I hated everything, ripped out tens of thousands of words, rewrote, figured out how to save some of the stuff... Just not getting very far with it. I'm going to finish this story but the SC stories just hate me for some reason. I WILL finish it, though.

Also stalled on the Mike O'Neal book. Waiting for cooler weather to prevail.

Probably will start on another Vorpal Blade or possibly a one off after that.

Or, who knows, whatever my muse says.

On to other things.

Antropologists have hit the news recently with the report that the US military is using anthropologists and such to work with the troops on understanding the local cultures so as to better 'win their hearts and minds.' All the usual suspects are whinging up a storm and some departments are trying to either not hire such 'evil people' or get rid of the ones that they do have.

I know that most of my readers are of the 'if you have them by the balls...' persuasion but the results have been interesting. One of the factors that has helped in Anbar, for example, is such programs finally building really good databases of the tribes and who is related to whom. Such information is vitally important but the military has never been able to a. build one effectively or b. keep one through rotations. I knew one guy who had built one (a good one), turned it over to the incoming group and when he got sent back to the same area found that they'd tried to do it with pencil and paper because the guys assigned to it couldn't handle the Excel system he'd built. Hopefully, with the military now getting serious about something that was stone obvious to me in 2003 they'll quit playing fuck around.

But the point of the matter is that the various, in most case lefty type, anthropologists and such are getting shit from their 'friends.' If you encounter such a person, remind them that the dark side is the big tent. We're willing to talk to them and even invite them to our parties. There we can start our famous brainwashing program and before you know it these people with actual, you know, backgrounds in history might just go 'Wait! Global climate change has been going on forever! Herodotus wrote about it! Why would it suddenly be man's fault?!'

You never know.

On a semi-personal note on this:

I have a friend who is a socialist. (Yeah, I know.) I won't go into who or stuff because of what I'll be discussing below.

He has a friend from 'in the day' who is and was a serious peacenik. My friend (I'll call him Bob) and I were having a discussion about the quality of the modern general Joe Troop and he said 'I have a confirmation on that from an unlikely source.'

His friend had never found much luck with converting soldiers to the cause of peace at any cost. But he kept trying. Couple of years ago, he was trying with an infantry trooper just back from Afghanistan. The trooper listened politely and didn't get into it (we have some remarkable soldiers these days, we really do) then asked the peacenik what he did.

Peacenik: 'I'm a specialist in community conflict resolution and harsh economic condition business start-up.'

(He tries to get gangs to quit fighting and open 7/11s in ghettos instead.)

Trooper: 'Damn, sir. We really could have used you on our last deployment. We need people who are experts in conflict resolution. Is there any way I can get my chain of command in touch with you.'

Which really bemused the peacenik and my friend.

This exchange was a couple of years ago. I just found out that the peacenik is, yes, in the Rockpile doing conflict resolution. Working for 'a contracting company'. (This bemuses everyone involved.)

'It's different, and better, when you know you're actually keeping people alive.'

This has caused the peacenik many problems with his former 'movement' buddies. And he's found out that the 'babykillers' (I doubt this is the sort of guy whose used that term, at least since the '70s) are anything but. His comment was that 'just regular troops' were 'polite, professional and intelligent.'

The whole thing has me chuckling. I've known that our troops were 'polite, professional and intelligent' (well, until you get them around a titty bar) for years. The fun part is that the really serious members of various lefty-liberal professions who are dealing with them are finding out the same. This is a good thing, people. Lefty liberals are here to stay. You can't persuade most of them (cause they can't do logic) and killing them is just soooo much paperwork. Getting some of them, at least, to experience the reality of what our troops are like is important. We can't stay on two sides of a gulch forever. It's not good for the nation, it's not good for the world. And as this peacenik proves, the serious ones about any area tend to be useful. It's the poseurs that are useless. (And generally the ones that can't do logic.)

Last fun story: (And in a similar vein.)

A (female) friend who is also a bit of a lefty-liberal up in NY has recently been teaching a class about teaching a class. (Don't go there.)

It's a program for 'foreign students' on how American universities teach.

The students are from Palestine and various other Arabic countries.

The class chosen for observation is a class on 'SF as Art.' (Which started the discussion. And the syllabus is just... Let's just not go there.)

The instructor of the class on the class, as mentioned above, is female.

When she finally connected the dots for me, in an email containing more than a few complaints about the quality of the 'students', I nearly broke a blood vessel laughing.

Oh. My. God.

A bunch of haji wannabes taking a class from a female instructor on how to give a Science Fiction class?

Only a university program totally devoid of reality could come up with that one.

Oh, one final serious and very tough note.

Hank Reinhardt, husband of Toni Weisskopf the publisher of Baen, is in the hospital in Critical Care.

Hank was doing very poorly at DragonCon. I and Miriam both classed it as congestive heart failure. The signs were obvious. Turns out he was checked for that and cleared. (I'd love to see the results on that . There was no way any doctor with two eyes could have made that mistake.) He was treated for a lung problem. Then it became all too evident that he was having heart problems. He got catheterized then scheduled for a bypass. Ended up a quintuple bypass. Got a bit better, got worse, Staph infection on the bypass.

He's been in CCU for a week or so now. Won't go into what they did except to say it's a torture the Vikings used on monks who wouldn't tell them where the gold was. Very much day to day. Prayers are welcome and desired. As of Friday it was 'day to day...with improvement.' Let us all pray and keep our fingers crossed.

The good news is that given the degree of obstruction, if Hank makes it he'll be better than he's been in ten years or so. I really do hope he makes it. He's a friend but he's also just a very cool guy. They don't make many like Hank (who is the original for Duke Edmund) and when he goes up to the Big Fighting Hall in the sky the world will be a much poorer place.

Hang in there, buddy.



Take care, all,


John