July 13 2014: Is technology making us more or less creative?

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

Albert Einstein

 

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When it comes to the successful mangling of the English language, I have long favored the U.S. Army as the most successful practitioner. It is capable of taking almost any concept or item of information and mangling it in such a way that virtually no one understands what is being discussed—including (sometimes) the briefer.

Back in 2001 (remember that year?) I recall attending a conference on Army Transformation (General Shinseki’s project) and failing to understand much of it—even though it was not innately complex). Eventually, I spoke to my neighbor, who I was to learn was a retired LTC and Vietnam combat veteran called Greg Wilcox (who was to become a good friend) and said: “Do you understand this?”

Greg looked a bit sheepish. “Er, no,” he replied. “Well, I understand some of it, but…”

It turned out there was nothing particularly complicated about Army Transformation except the communication of it—and some of the underlying assumptions. The trouble with clear communication is that it tends to expose flawed assumptions.

But why is this irrational practice allowed to continue? Let me offer a few thoughts on the matter. Am I being entirely serious? Given the number of military friends I have, perhaps not—but it is certainly true that clear communication is not one of the Army’s strengths. Mind you, you can probably say that about most large institutions short of dictatorships. You can criticize Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin every which way—but they certainly got their messages across.

• There is no relationship between the U.S. Army and rationality (and you can apply that statement to just about every army). War may at times be necessary—but it is never rational.
• Armies spend only a small amount of time actually fighting. Theoretically, they should train—but that’s expensive. As a consequence, for a great deal of time, they are a massive make-work machine. Confusion aids that task wonderfully.
• The U.S. Army loves acronyms—and one of the main purposes of an acronym (often the only purpose) is for the insider to understand (or pretend to) and the outsider to be confused. To use acronyms with ease shows that you are a member of the club.
• Officially (the real purpose may be otherwise) the whole idea of an Army briefing is to communicate yet it is politically impossible to admit that you don’t understand. Senior officers understand by definition which is why they are senior. More junior officers don’t want to admit ignorance for fear they will never be promoted to be senior.
• The Army operates on the basis on relatively short postings interrupted by training courses, exercises, and other distractions. As a consequence, no one is around long enough to really get to know anything—let alone each other. Well, that’s an exaggeration, but it is certainly true that the personnel churn is such that it can be an issue.
• Senior officers (by which I mainly mean generals) have a habit of becoming committed to projects independent of the underlying data. Projects then become positions they feel they have to defend. A major cause of such commitment is the fact that the officer concerned intends to retire to the supplier concerned. That is, of course, a clear conflict of interest—but it also common.

Well, I’ve kidded the Army enough—but actually it does have a serious communication problem—which is a theme I’ll pursue on another occasion. The good news is that the weaknesses of the institutional structure of the Army (the public relations aspect if you will) are more than compensated for by the courage and commitment of the Soldiers at the sharp end.

What prompted these thoughts was a radio segment discussing whether technology was making us more creative or less.

The findings were:

• The standard of writing is suffering since minimal effort is put into e-mails—and virtually none at all into texting.
• The standard of artistic expression is improving—as you would expect given the ever increasing emphasis on computer graphics.

Does one compensate for the other? All I know is that texting makes me very, very uneasy.

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July 12 2014: The overwhelming importance of a writing routine—and the three main causes of it being interrupted short of hurricanes or acts of war.

I never listen to music when I'm working. I haven't that kind of attentiveness, and I wouldn't like it at all. On the other hand, I'm able to work fairly well among ordinary distractions. My house has a living room that is at the core of everything that goes on: it is a passageway to the cellar, to the kitchen, to the closet where the phone lives. There's a lot of traffic. But it's a bright, cheerful room, and I often use it as a room to write in, despite the carnival that is going on all around me. A girl pushing a carpet sweeper under my typewriter table has never annoyed me particularly, nor has it taken my mind off my work, unless the girl was unusually pretty or unusually clumsy. My wife, thank God, has never been protective of me, as, I am told, the wives of some writers are. In consequence, the members of my household never pay the slightest attention to my being a writing man—they make all the noise and fuss they want to. If I get sick of it, I have places I can go. A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.

E.B. White (see photo below)

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I have reached the stage where I am extraordinarily productive when I’m following my writing routine—but can fritter away massive amounts of time when I’m dislodged from it.

Perhaps I’m being a little harsh on myself here. The issue is not necessarily that I fritter the time away—though that can happen in a seemingly infinite variety of ways (and I can be far from blameless). It is more that my routine is now so ingrained that I have become dependent on it.

I say “dislodged” because I rarely abandon my writing routine of my own volition until the work in question is finished. In fact, even then, I withdraw slowly and reluctantly. It’s not that I don’t get a buzz out of completing a work. It is more that I get even more pleasure out of the actual writing itself. The process is what really turns me on. I feel much the same way about sex. Actually making love is, as far as I am concerned, generally speaking even more enjoyable than orgasm (which is saying a lot).

There are three villains where a breakdown in routine is concerned.

• LIFE—with a heavy emphasis on social obligations. Putting it simply, most people don’t understand the truly desperate need to write that suffuses a writer. They understand what is involved in principle—you string words together, sometimes quite entertainingly—and they regard such a skill as mildly useful in an impractical sort of way—but they don’t appreciate that a true writer has to write or life becomes meaningless. It is writing that gives both meaning and purpose to a writer’s life. Family, friends and riches are all very well—but  only writing validates a writer’s existence. Writing is not just a job you can leave when requested—it is the essence of life itself.

So how do I handle “life?” In essence, I try and steer clear of it as much as possible without being anti-social. As I have tried to explain previously (on numerous occasions—with scant success) the issue is not that I don’t like people—I am not a recluse and enjoy few things more than dinner with friends—but that I like writing more.

But, overall, I have become fairly pragmatic about life—and accept the fact that there is a certain amount of it that a writer just can’t dodge (and that a great deal of it is no more than a plot to stop us writers doing what we need to do).

• STRESS resulting from being emotionally upset. This can happen for a variety of reasons from a row to a shock resulting from a health issue to a failure on one’s own part. The key point is that your emotional balance is disturbed to the point where the subject you are writing about is displaced by the emotional issue.

I rarely lose my temper or have rows these days—I made a resolution not to lose my temper over four and half years ago, and have stuck to it—but suffice to say that still leaves plenty of causes of stress. The bottom line is that I have a tendency to over-react (whether I show it or not) and am not as emotionally resilient as I would like. I regard it as a character weakness which I’m trying to redress. However, I find I tend to need time to recover. It can easily wreck a day for me—but if have a good night’s sleep—it rarely wrecks two. One of the best antidotes is to write. Once I start writing, my mood is almost invariably improved. If I had been Nero, I would have written while Rome burned.

• COMPUTERS. Here, I really mean technology issues but since I tend to think of them as “computer problems” I think I’ll stick with that phrase. These run the gamut from hardware issues to faulty internet connections (plus, I’m sure, my ignorance) But I seem to have had more of them than most of my peers. There is a context here. Whether for reasons or by happenstance, machines of various types have long broken down around me rather more than seemed normal. In fact, at one stage before I became a writer I ran a business machines company, and sample machines sent for evaluation broke down so often, it was creepy.

What I have noticed is that my writer friends with Macs seem to have vastly less trouble, so I tell all writers who will listen to go that route.

You can write with the simplest of tools—a pencil and a piece of paper will be sufficient—but I confess that despite all my computer issues, I have persevered and have become thoroughly addicted to the point where I virtually cannot function without an internet connection.

I don’t need ideal conditions under which to work—and don’t recall ever experiencing them. However, I have worked out an optimum layout tied to an array of machines and peripherals I rely on—and if one of them is not working, it throws me more than it probably should. Nonetheless, though the fact that a peripheral may be dysfunctional for some mysterious reason (known only to God and Windows 8.1) doesn’t stop me working.

What I will say is that a standard layout tied to a regular routine is of enormous assistance in ensuring that I do write daily.

Writer’s routines are fairly comprehensively described in THE PARIS REVIEW and other publications—and, based upon my own experience, are well worth reading. Certainly, I found them invaluable.

They demonstrate that when it comes right down to it, no matter how successful the writer being interviewed may be, we all struggle with much the same difficulties—and all start with an empty page.

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July 11 2014: The great and unending debate about the best pistol caliber for personal defense

The British were keen for 30 caliber guns, did not believe in daylight bombing. American experts said 30 caliber was not enough; we had to have 50 caliber, also said daylight bombing was right provided the planes attacked in formation, with 50 caliber guns.

Stuart Symington

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To be frank, semi-automatic pistols look—on the face of it—remarkably similar even if there are important points of detail which differentiates the weapons.

This is the FN 5.7mm. Superficially, it looks like many a 9mm, but actually it uses a decidedly different cartridge—a much smaller, high velocity 5.7mm round which has little kick—so is easier to shoot—and which can penetrate soft body armor—and has an impressively flat trajectory for a more than adequate range. If you want to shoot somebody at 50-100 meters (unlikely, but you never know) the 5.7mm will do it for you.

But can such a small bullet be militarily effective? Read on. These are my opinions—no more. Would I use such a weapon for personal defense? Yes, I would.

Do I currently carry a weapon? No I don’t. In Seattle, I don’t feel the need.

I don’t pretend to know the correct answer to the question of the optimum personal defense handgun caliber. Overall, I take the view that if the U.S. military—with all its resources—hasn’t been able to resolve the issue, my personal opinion is likely to count for little. And here I would add that there are vast numbers of U.S. gun owners—many extremely experienced—who have shot a great deal and hold their own views. I respect their expertise.

For all that, I do have a dog in the fight because I like to have a logic behind the weapons my characters choose to use—particularly where Hugo Fitzduane, the soldier turned combat photographer turned counter-terrorist expert, who features in most of my novel to date, is concerned.

Hugo is a thinking soldier—and militarily very experienced—so I like my readers to follow his thinking providing it doesn’t slow up the action. Sometimes characters just act spontaneously much as real people do—but mostly Hugo has a rationale for what he does. He is tactically extremely proficient. My feeling is that Hugo doesn’t have to be right—he merely has to be right for him. If the round he chooses keeps him alive, he is content. Not unreasonably, he regards his survival as a very personal matter.

Hugo is somewhat frustrated by the fact that when firing .45 or 9mm handguns—the calibers he has used for most of career—he is not a particularly good shot. He is fast and competent in combat—talents which have kept him alive—but his shooting on the range has never been more than adequate (a source of some embarrassment) and he longs to do significantly better. He knows this is primarily a matter of ego rather than military necessity—but feels it is a fairly harmless indulgence which might even prove useful. However, his general rule, when in a combat situation, is not to rely on a handgun at all—but to use a rifle or heavier weapon. He also has found that the noble arts of concealment or running away have a great deal of merit. He understands full well that you never quite know what will happen in a fight, that bullets are squirrelly, and that avoiding violence is always the preferred option unless you have no choice in the matter.

Hugo understands the pistol caliber debate full well. He is well aware of the appeal of a pistol round with stopping power—such as the .45—but has also noticed that, regardless of caliber—multiple hits often need to be achieved if the assailant is pumped full of adrenalin (which tends to be the situation in a fight). In short, he has become a believer in accurate shot placement combined with multiple hits because clearly stopping power is of little use if you can’t hit your target—and multiple hits from a small caliber seem to make up for their lack of individual stopping power.

Regarding the importance of getting a hit, I was much influenced by my late friend, Dr. Joe Sperrazza—a truly wonderful man—who headed up a study that examined many thousands of casualties during the Vietnam War. Joe found that even a hit by a small fragment could have a significant effect so was skeptical of the worship of stopping power. Instead he would stress: “Get a hit! Get a hit! Get a hit!” in his lectures—and just to make sure everyone was paying attention, he liked to throw chalk at you. His talks were both hilarious and memorable—and he was a Great American and friend. Essentially, he was a weapons scientist and worked out of the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. There is a building named after him there. It was a well earned honor.

Hugo takes to the FN 5.7mm handgun like the proverbial duck to water. These are his reasons:

• He has already had favorable experience of the unusual looking FN 5.7mm PDW (Personal Defense Weapon or carbine) and knows the combat effectiveness of the small round
• He likes the fact that the high velocity 5.7mm can penetrate soft body armor yet yaws when in the body. This means that the wound channel it delivers is based on the bullet’s length rather than its diameter.
• He finds the 5.7mm particularly easy to shoot so his performance on the range improves considerably.
• He likes the fact that the weapon—even when loaded with a 20 round magazine—is still lighter than a Glock
• He likes the 4.5lb trigger pull
• He finds the FN 5.7mm pistol particularly well made.

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The weapons illustrated below are the FN carbines which use the 5.7mm round. They are most unusual looking weapons—but highly effective. The most unorthodox feature is the 50 round magazine which lies on the top of the weapon. The rounds in the magazine are stored at right-angles to the barrel, but are turned just before they are inserted. Sounds crazy—and it is certainly counter-intuitive—but it works even on full automatic fire. The weapon is extremely light and compact and is effective up to about 200 meters.

 

 

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July 10 2014: In praise of book-browsing

“I took my time, running my fingers along the spines of books, stopping to pull a title from the shelf and inspect it. A sense of well-being flowed through me as I circled the ground floor. It was better than meditation or a new pair of shoes- or even chocolate. My life was a disaster, but there were still books. Lots and lots of books. A refuge. A solace. Each one offering the possibility of a new beginning.”

Beth Pattillo, Jane Austen Ruined My Life

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I’ll be sad indeed if real printed books vanish. Right now, they are holding on remarkably well given the initial phenomenal growth of e-books, but I have a feeling we are going to have a new range of e-books and tablets within the next couple of years which will be:

• Lighter
• Cheaper
• Be easier to read under differing lighting conditions
• Have improved audio
• Will offer features we haven’t even thought of just yet

In short, I don’t think the e-book evolution has plateaued permanently. I think this is more akin to a consolidation period prior to a series of further onslaughts.

Amazon, as they say, never sleeps. Well, nor does Apple or technology as a whole.

What worries me about real books vanishing is the thought that real book-stores will vanish as well. In that situation, how will you book-browse? I have tried browsing on the internet, but it truly is not the same experience. It’s not tactile. There is no book smell.

Walking apart, book-browsing is one of the best ways I know of coming up with a fresh idea, clearing your mind, or otherwise stimulating your brain.

I don’t necessarily buy what I find—or I would quickly run out of floor space (I speak from experience) not to mention money—but I treasure being able to dip into the distilled output of brain after brain, and to be constantly surprised. Also browsing has a tendency to surface fascinating facts—the kind that fill in the space between two thoughts you have had already (and, with luck, will either confirm or connect them)..

The other day, I ran across a new account of the 1967 Israeli war—which was militarily extraordinarily successful—but arguably gave rise to the political logjam which is such a feature of that part of the world today.

In the book, there was an account of Orde Wingate, the British Army officer, who had such a formative effect on the Israeli Defense Forces. As it happens, a great uncle of mine took over his Burma unit, the Chindits, after Wingate himself was killed—and I was at school with his son. But primarily I have long been drawn to Wingate because he had such an original military mind. He just thought, and fought, differently

The account told me a great deal I knew already—including the fact that he ate onions like apples—but also confirmed a thought that I have been working on for years.

What is it? Wait for my book.

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July 9 2014: The military cake—fought over incessantly—and not, necessarily, to the nation’s advantage. The result—not necessarily military effectiveness. Time for a drastic re-think? It will be bitterly opposed by the MICC? What is the MICC? It is the deeply corrupt Military Industrial Congressional Complex.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

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Be warned—I’m not technically trained. However—as befits my role as a writer—I’m normally able to become sufficiently familiar with a device to explain its principles, functionality, and (if it is a weapon) tactical relevance and deployment.

To that end, I have a keen interest in technology with a strong bias towards matters military—and, particularly, the Army. And, of course, I not only researched the Army in the Nineties—I worked for the Vice (Vice Chief of Staff of the Army) in 2001/2.

In all, I have been researching, thinking about, and otherwise studying the Army for 20 years in some detail—and for decades in general terms. Flaws and all, I hold it in high regard and consider it with considerable affection. Many of the people I have met during that period, I consider my friends. To a man or woman, they have one characteristic in common—they care. I don’t know one I don’t regard with respect and affection.

Do I agree with their mindsets? Well, in most cases we have shared values, but some of us have different views in other ways. I hold to the view that no disrespect is implied by disagreeing. If nothing else, it demonstrates concern.

Let me make a conceptual leap here: To my mind, it’s questionable as to whether there should be a separate Army—as currently constituted—today.  Air and ground have the potential to be so tactically integrated that it is highly questionable as to whether the two forces should operate as two separate services—or even as two branches.

In fact, fairly soon it should be regarded as unthinkable for a mission to be conducted without air and ground operating as one—and for air virtually always to be incorporated. Despite all the hype about PGMs, drones, and satellite surveillance (to mention just some elements) air and ground are still far from integrated, and there are still considerable capability gaps. These exist not just for technical reasons, but because higher command has not yet committed to the notion that total integration is the way to go. In fact, total integration is not even understood.

Yes, combined arms is the official doctrine, and that involves a high level of cooperation, but integration is a further step forward—and a massive one at that. Integration means you recruit, train, deploy and fight as one unit.

Whether that will happen as fast as will be technically possible is a good question. In fact, it is far from certain it will happen at all  for a considerable time—even though the arguments in favor of enhancing combat effectiveness would seem to support it.

If I convey a certain doubt here, it is because the integrity of war games can be suspect—and is vulnerable to the wishes (whether expressed or implied) of higher command. If the CSA (Chief of Staff of the Army) is backing a particular approach to Army modernization, it will take a brave officer indeed to thwart him—and facts are not an adequate excuse.

How do I know this? Call it first-hand experience. The CSA, in those days, was General Shinseki—the same man who resigned recently from the Veterans Administration.

The different services are fiercely territorial—and branches have a tendency to be little better. This is caused by history, training, environment, the availability of limited resources, command structures—and good old-fashioned human greed and ambition. Don’t knock the latter qualities. They tend to be front and center.

In short, the different branches are not only conditioned to think of themselves as belonging to the best branch, but their members are actively concerned to secure their maximum share of the spoils. This is very human and understandable—particularly where higher command has been conditioned to think a certain way for decades—but it is not the right mindset to have when facing the degree of change the U.S. Army is.

This is an opinion—no more—offered in respect. Will it upset some people?

It seems highly likely. It needs to be said.

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July 8 2014: If antibiotics cease to be effective—as is happening at present—we are going to die younger, faster, and more unpleasantly (and unnecessarily). This is not a future problem. It is already beginning to have an impact. It is a vastly greater threat than terrorism.

The danger posed by growing resistance to antibiotics should be ranked along with terrorism on a list of threats to the nation, the government's chief medical officer for England has said.

Professor Dame Sally Davies described it as a "ticking time bomb".

She warned that routine operations could become deadly in just 20 years if we lose the ability to fight infection.

Dame Sally said: "If we don't take action, then we may all be back in an almost 19th Century environment where infections kill us as a result of routine operations. We won't be able to do a lot of our cancer treatments or organ transplants."

"We haven't had a new class of antibiotics since the late 80s and there are very few antibiotics in the pipeline of the big pharmaceutical companies that develop and make drugs," she said.

 

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Antibiotic overuse is a massive problem for two main reasons:

• Antibiotics are being overprescribed by the medical profession.
• Antibiotics are being fed to intensively raised feedstock animals to minimize the diseases which would otherwise result from the appalling conditions so many are raised in. In fact, roughly 80 percent of U.S. sales of antibiotics are made to the Industrial Agriculture market.

Both of these are preventable abuses which we are doing virtually nothing to prevent.

A predicable consequence is that antibiotics are becoming less effective by the day.

It is insane to feed antibiotics to animals for purely preventative reason when we know the consequences will be so dire.

What surprised and disturbed me was finding quite how far antibiotic resistance has already progressed.

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July 7 2014: PGMs (Precision Guided Munitions). It’s tough keeping up to date in this business. Introducing a guidable .50 sniper round—DARPA’s EXACTO program

Interrogator: How many of your soldiers were killed by the air war?

Iraqi Officer: To be honest, for the amount of ordnance that was dropped, not very many. Only one soldier was killed and two were wounded. The soldier that was killed did not die as a result of a direct hit, but because the vibrations of the bomb caused a bunker to cave in on top of him.

Interrogator: So, then you feel the aerial bombardment was ineffective?

Iraqi Officer: Oh no! Just the opposite! It was extremely effective! The planes hit only vehicles and equipment. Even my personal vehicle, a ‘Waz’ was hit. They hit everything! [emphasis in original text]33

The second is from an Iraqi general reflecting morosely on the war:

During the Iran war, my tank was my friend because I could sleep in it and know I was safe ... During this war my tank became my enemy ... none of my troops would get near a tank at night because they just kept blowing up.34

 

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Leaving nuclear weapons out of it, the great development in weapons since WW II has been the evolution of PGMs (Precision Guided Munitions).

In WW II, despite the introduction of the Norden bomb sight and other technologies, it wasn’t uncommon for bombers to miss—literally by miles—whereas today a bomber is well over 90 percent certain of hitting a target with a single bomb—even if dropped from over 20,000 feet, at night, under adverse weather conditions.

In terms of sheer military effectiveness, the evolution of PGMs has been nothing short of remarkable. Add in the extraordinary degree to which electronics have been developed and miniaturized, and it was—I suppose—entirely inevitable that the PGB (Precision Guided Bullet) would eventually appear. It now has—and it works.

The following is what DARPA says on the matter.

With an ability to strike from great distances, snipers present a unique threat in the field of battle. This long-range lethality is not without its complications, however, with accuracy often dictated by wind, rain and dust, not to mention targets that are constantly on the move. Over the last few months, DARPA has been conducting live-fire tests of guided .50 caliber bullets and today unveiled footage demonstrating the project's success.

With the aim of improving accuracy and safety for military snipers, DARPA's Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) project is tasked with developing more accurate artillery that will enable greater firing range, minimize the time required to engage with targets and also help to reduce missed shots that can give away a troop's location.

The EXACTO 50-caliber round is claimed to be the first ever guided small-caliber bullet. The maneuverable projectile uses a real-time optical guidance system to change its path mid-flight and home in on a target, potentially overcoming adverse weather and hostile conditions to improve sniper accuracy.

DARPA isn't giving too much away in terms of technical detail. However, if the illustration above is any indication, the steering mechanism used by DARPA appears different to the method used by a team at the Sandia National Laboratories back in 2012.

In that case, researchers developed a small-caliber guided bullet prototype capable of steering toward a laser-marked target 2 km (1.2 mi) away. This was accomplished by way of an optical sensor on the bullet's nose that gathers flight path information, while onboard electronics controlled tiny fins on its side to direct it toward the target. No such fins can be seen on the EXACTO round.

The DARPA footage, which can be seen below, demonstrates two rounds of live-fire testing. With the rifle intentionally aimed to the right of the marked target, the bullet can be seen veering in trajectory, altering its path to strike accurately over an undisclosed distance. DARPA claims the technology is likely to markedly extend the day and night-time range of current sniper systems.

Following the successful demonstration of the round's guidance systems and sensor, DARPA will now work to refine the technology to improve performance and conduct system-level live fire testing.

Source: DARPA

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