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So far E.T. has created 45 blog entries.

January 2014

Dark & Doubtful: Movies of the Iraq II & Afghanistan Generation

2016-12-28T21:37:56+00:00January 17th, 2014|Culture, Defense|

I challenge you to find a chest-pounding, upbeat, pro-American movie about conflict released in the last five years. Cross out “pro-American” and I’ll bet you still can’t do it.

This thought occurred to me as I finally got around to watching Iron Man 3. Brash? Sure. Action-packed? Duh. But classic good-guys, bad-guys name-of-justice beat ’em up? Not exactly.

The “bad guy” is a shadowy, ubiquitous terrorist who turns out to be made-up. Our main character suffers from PTSD. The American government, completely in thrall of the military-industrial complex, is inept, indecisive, and vaguely sinister. The one “good guy” who fights under the Stars and Stripes spends the whole movie barging in on innocent Pakistanis. The real bad guys (a defense contractor) are staffed by amputee veterans of “some war in the Middle East.” Could the message be any Starker – or more cynical?

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Currahee

2016-12-28T21:37:56+00:00January 12th, 2014|Life|

This is a short tale about a mountain I tried to run up, twice. TL;DR, the mountain kicked my ass.

First off, let me tell you about Currahee. It’s a 1,700 foot monster, sticking up just south of the Blue Ridge mountains and, by extension, the entire Appalachian chain. It’s the biggest, baddest mountain anywhere close to where I grew up.

It’s also eminently runnable and happy to break your body and spirit, as the boys of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne discovered in this remarkably well preserved archival footage (after the jump).

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Interesting Times

2016-12-28T21:37:56+00:00January 9th, 2014|Life, Tech|

“May you live in interesting times,” goes the ancient, subtly backhanded, vaguely oriental curse. The phrase is, in fact, likely a fabrication of a 20th century British imperialist, but it’s still a great saying so let’s just roll with it.

The word “interesting,” before it became a de facto placeholder to deploy in event of any awkward pause, actually had some nuance. It means “engaging the attention or regard” but in a uniquely subdued way. It’s a word that invites thoughtful pause in lieu of immediate action. Something “interesting” is almost never wholly good and can frequently be bad, hence the curse part.

While every generation generally believes that they have it the hardest yet and that their challenges are unprecedented, I think Millennials/Gen Y have something new to alternately brag and complain about: the years into which we’ve come of age really are the most complex, mind-boggling, abstract, and interesting in human history. Successfully navigating this flurry of social and technological change will be the task of our lifetimes and entirely determine the fate of those generations who come after us.

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When computers can do it all, what comes next?

2016-12-28T21:37:57+00:00January 5th, 2014|Tech|

As I helped my dad shop for a new mid-grade laptop over the Christmas holiday. I was absolutely floored by the low-cost options on hand: roughly $400 got you a dual-core 2.2Ghz processor, 4GB of RAM, and ~500GB of storage. If you wanted to go lower, you could nab one of those wildly popular <$250 Chromebooks, sans OS entirely.

Every model available, no matter how cheap, had more than enough power to handle basic consumer applications both reliably and virtually lag-free. For the purposes of the vast majority of users, computers really aren’t “slow” anymore. It’s an incredible change over just five years ago, and the pace keeps on accelerating.

Keeping Moore’s Law alive and well, Intel will be debuting an 8-core processor in the 2014 cycle.  HDD (non-flash) storage costs declined a further 20% in 2013, standing at .00000015% what they did in 1970. A friend recently posted a bandwidth speed test in which he clocked a non-theoretical download speed of 630.85 MB/s, making all regular bandwidth use virtually instantaneous. He could download the world’s first (160GB) 4K video in roughly four minutes.

The world of computing tech seems, very quickly, to be outpacing its practical applications. I don’t believe (unlike a certain apocryphal patent office employee) that everything that can be invented has been invented, but I remain very stumped as to what future inventions might possibly look like.

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Going West

2015-01-23T00:49:14+00:00January 5th, 2014|Gold|

From Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men

I was headed out down a long bone-white road, straight as a string  and smooth as glass and glittering and wavering in the heat and humming under the tires like a plucked nerve. I was doing seventy-five but I never seemed to catch up with the pool that seemed to be over the road just this side of the horizon. Then, after a while, the sun was in my eyes, for I was driving west. So I pulled the sun screen down and squinted and put the throttle to the floor. And kept on moving west.

For West is where we all plan to go someday. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: ‘Flee, all is discovered.’ It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and see the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go.

Image courtesy of therese desjardin studio

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December 2013

What Makes a Good Blog?

2016-12-28T21:37:57+00:00December 28th, 2013|Life|

Too often, I’ve found myself with a ton of things I want to write but no good place to put them. To fix this, I’ve decided to start a blog. This website is the result.

Having studied a wide range of blogs and personal websites in preparation for launching my own, there are a few guiding principles I plan to abide by. By sticking to them, I hope to carve out a corner of the internet worth visiting.

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September 2013

Andalusia

2015-01-23T00:41:43+00:00September 11th, 2013|Defense|

Originally published September 11, 2013

In a broadcast following the attacks of 9/11, bin Laden began his statement with the following:

Let the whole world know that we shall never accept that the tragedy of Andalusia would be repeated in Palestine.  We cannot accept that Palestine will become Jewish.

By mentioning the “tragedy of Andalusia,” bin Laden referred to the bloody expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula by the Spanish and Portuguese.  The final Muslim kingdom fell in the year 1492.

Bin Laden believed the same thing was happening today to the displaced Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.  Since the formation of Israel in 1948, Palestinians had been pushed further and further from the lands they had inhabited for centuries.  Just as Westerners had conquered Spain, bin Laden thought the West was now in the process of conquering Palestine.

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M. Aurelius 5.1

2015-01-23T00:32:06+00:00September 3rd, 2013|Gold|

Originally published September 3, 2013. From Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.

Whenever in the morning you rise unwillingly, let this thought be with you: “I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if am about to do the things for which I was brought into the world? Or was I made to lie under the bedclothes and keep myself warm?”

“But that is more pleasant,” you say.

Do you live then to take your pleasure, and not at all for action and exertion? Do you not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees, working together to set in order their several parts of the universe? And are you unwilling to do the work of a human being, not eager to do what belongs to your nature?

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