On Strategy

The invaluable Al Fin blog has a post up titled The 48 Laws Of Power ... which lay out in synopsis fashion the 48 "laws" of strategy as defined by Robert Greene.  In the comments I pointed out how contradictory Mr. Greene's "laws" are and was invited by the Al Fin blogger to point out other works that I think better describe the precepts of strategic thought.  In an effort to avoid tl;dr in their comments at least, I opted to do all that here instead.

You takes your blog fodder where you finds it I suppose.

For the purposes of this post, I stipulate that Mr. Greene wasn't practicing original scholarship, but attempted to combine different schools of strategic thought into one book (as suggested in the same Al Fin comment stream).

There are basically two formats to presenting strategy, the classical circular structure and the western tradition of linear thinking.  Both have their advantages in detail, but the classical structure - while initially confusing to modern cause-and-effect thinking - offers the more coherent format over the broadest range of application of the fundamentals of the subject.

In the western tradition, strategy is commonly regarded as either a military or political function (and frequently some combination of those).  Clausewitz wrote to a military audience about the force multiplying benefits of logistics as a separate military specialization, particularly as applied to field artillery in support of infantry in both fixed as well as mobile operations.  Necessarily, this involved some examination of the requirements of obtaining political support of what a modern soldier would immediately recognize as a combined arms unit (then a rather novel concept).  Military units are structured for top-down command and are plotted in a pyramidal format.  Not coincidentally, strategies for using such forces are also laid out in the same limited context format.  This may produce effective combat units, but it seriously warps the applicability of the underlying concepts in other applications.

Students of strategy are remiss if they ignore Clausewitz though, his study of strategic principles in a tightly focused application is still the seminal examination of how such processes improve even a highly structured environment, particularly during chaotic events.

In the more overtly political arena can be found that other primary source of western strategic thought, Niccolo Machiavelli.  The Florentine's third book The Art Of War is more a philosophical study of the strategy of warfare than of actual strategy, its titular claim notwithstanding.  Taken together, The Prince and The Discourses offer a much better study of the justifications behind many strategic principles, but even these don't spend nearly enough narrative on the structure and inter-related nature of the actual principles themselves.

So we come to Sun Tzu.  Frankly, I find most translations of his The Art Of War to be nearly as inscrutable as the original text.  As a result, I cannot recommend strongly enough the work of Gary Gagliardi (pronounced "gah-lar-dy").  The Amazon page dedicated to his work has a decent bio of his qualifications along with (big surprise) links to many of his books examining how classical strategy applies to achieving understanding and success in a variety of ordinary human activity.  As a starting point, I recommend The Golden Key To Strategy or possibly The Bing-Fa, Martial Arts Strategy for those more inclined toward or experienced in martial arts either military or sport.  Almost any of Gary's business-oriented books will take the reader through the identical principles in that setting, as will The Art Of War + The Art Of Love in a personal context.

As can be seen, my assertion that classical strategy applies to all aspects of human activity isn't quite as unlikely as might be supposed.

Anyone just beginning a study of classical strategy would benefit from Gary's website, but the basic insight that classical strategy is conceived and presented as a circular whole, that chapter 1 takes off from the principles described in chapter 13, will help a reader new to Sun Tzu experience at least somewhat less initial confusion.  Classical strategy is  - pardon the seeming hippietude - a holistic concept that requires recognition that every principle is moderated and empowered by the context within which every other principle is applied.  It's not as confusing as all that might make it appear, but it can seem complex at first acquaintance.

My thanks to Al Fin for the inspiration to flail away on my favorite hobby horse; I call myself a student of strategy mostly because I long ago recognized I will never master the subject.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I suppose I should mention that I first started blogging at Gary's old strategy site (see here for an archival sample of my supposed insight :)), but I have no involvement with his current site or work nor do I receive compensation from any sales he may garner from my recommendations of his work, FTC disclaimer, yada yada, etc ...

http://alfin2100.blogspot.com/2012/06/48-laws-of-power-and-other-secret.html

Don't Let The Goldbugs Bite

So, Tam takes notice of a recent Captain Capitalism post that uses the seemingly immortal gold = money illusion as a metaphor to illustrate a tedious teaching challenge, not to mention a very debilitating belief.  As is her want, she draws a sound conclusion, and this is a topic I have given some consideration heretofore.

Nice to see some of my earlier speculations given presumptively true status, however all unknowingly.

http://booksbikesboomsticks.blogspot.com/2012/06/qotd-keeping-score-edition.html

http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2012/06/were-taking-you-with-us.html

Less Crime = Lying Cops?

At his Bayou Renaissance Man blog, Peter writes:

There's a very interesting article over at PoliceOne discussing how, in many jurisdictions, crimes are under-reported, wrongly recorded, and generally 'fudged' for political reasons...

I highly recommend clicking over to PoliceOne and reading the entire report. It provides very important insight into a problem that directly and immediately affects your own security. If you don't know the true dimensions and nature of the crime problem in your area, how will you know whether or not to take additional precautions, or be prepared to deal with specific types of crime?

As I said in his comments, one of the more seeming open-and-shut arguments advanced by many gun bloggers recently is the idea that "more guns = less crime". If the reporting from PoliceOne.com is as widespread as it appears, just how trustworthy are the statistics this line of reasoning relies on? Do the actual numbers really support the conclusion we gun owners think we're making?

This is more than a quibble over semantics. If the "... less crime" half of the argument isn't actually true (indeed, if the apparent crime reduction synonymous with the rise in gun ownership is actually false and no correlation exists), what evidence is there to disprove the notion that this official statistical fraud is instead hiding a rise in gun-involved crime?

Food for thought, indeed.

 It is usually a better strategy to control the context of a dispute, to get ahead of your oppositions arguments as it were, so my initial thought is to make a point of the unreliable nature of the official statistical record and to dismiss efforts to debate any point that relies upon them. Stick to the historical record of political/constitutional arguments about US citizen gun ownership and concentrate on the positive individual growth and development achievable through responsible gun usage. Defensive gun usage shouldn't be minimized, but it might be more effective to relegate such arguments to a supportive role rather than boldly flaunt assertions that appear more than a little questionable at the moment.

The whole "tide of history" thing is still running strong; concentrating on legal gun ownership, while making the point often about how unreliable "official" records seemingly are,  just makes better sense to me.

http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2012/06/crime-statistics-less-than-trustworthy.html

Zombie Outbreak?

Come on, what else was I going to call something like this after I saw it at Drudge?

Preparing For The Future

The Atomic Nerds offer insightful commentary on the week so far; I concur. Being a union guy though (I was actually elected our shop steward by my fellow employees recently) (poor bastards :)), I chose to use one of my vacation days to get myself in the proper state of mind for the upcoming Good Friday holiday this weekend. Being unionized, we get some input into which occasions during the year we wish to "celebrate" by our absence from our place of employment, and this Friday is one of them.

Went to the local County office that handles vehicle registration (along with most other tax collection-related activities for Smith County) and got the pick-up truck re-tagged for the year. In an associated observation, you would think that such a critical function of state government would make more of an effort to abide by the legislation their efforts are directed at funding. Here in Smith County, the edifice named The Cotton Belt Building houses the tax collecting offices (along with several other "services") but all of the exterior doors display an illegal notice barring guns being carried into the building. Given the presence of Sheriffs Deputies at all the doors, not to mention basic respect for the intent behind the law regulating such activity, I left my pistol locked in the truck. Even so, I can report that the coppers on the doors are not the least amused by casual queries about the violation of Texas law the signs (scroll down to Sec.30.06) on the doors exhibit. I wouldn't go so far as to say the one I spoke with was un-courteous, just really, really unamused.

That minor drag on market transactions complete, I went to Lock & Load for some much needed ballistic therapy. I recently bought a Smith & Wesson model 559 in 9mm (new in the box!) and wanted to put another 100 rounds or so through it. As every new gun owner knows, minor mal-adjustments or hardened preservatives/lubricants often don't become apparent until several hundred rounds have been fired through them (the guns, not the owners). This particular S&W offering is starting to exhibit failures to extract with no particular indications of the extractor hook (clip? blade?) gouging the brass especially. The spring pressure seems adequate (to finger pressure - I'm sure a specific strain gauge exists but I don't own one) (yet), and there isn't any obvious accumulation of gunk (excuse the technical terminology) in that area of the bolt, so I will just field strip it again and give it all a good going over with a can of brake cleaner.

I did get it sighted in to my initial satisfaction. I chose my usual 21' and managed to "chase the hole" around the paper until I stopped and thought about it for a bit. Elevate the rear sight (this model features a fixed blade front sight) to raise the point of contact on the target, drift the rear sight left to move the point of impact on the paper to the left. Don't know why this continues to seem counter-intuitive to me. As I started to say, I finally managed a reasonably consistent ~1" group at 21', after allowing for repeated stoppages to clear FTE's. :) Not too bad from a new gun, and one in a model that is itself new to me as a shooter (it's surprising how much a minor-seeming difference like the thickness of the grip or even the tactile feel of different grip materials can have on basic sight acquisition and grip mechanics, isn't it?). I've put off buying a 9mm for at least 35 years now; even with the to-be-expected new gun quibbles I'm thinking that was one of my less well thought out decisions.

I'll be going back to the range on Friday (that was the justification for the day off, remember?); we'll try it again then. Maybe some pictures too if I remember to bring an actual camera instead of just my crappy cell phone. It's not a question of "blog standards" you understand, I just want a clear enough picture that I can tell what I'm looking at next year.

What Is This Privacy You Speak Of?

JayG has a post up from yesterday about the modern HR penchant for basing employment decisions at least in part on social media activity:

Right off the bat, let's dispense with the obligatory: A private business has every right to ask this of potential employees. It's short-sighted, doesn't address the real issues, and has every possibility of turning the "Streisand Effect" up to 11, but they still have the right to do it. It's a pretty stark reminder of the lousy economy, though, that a company could even consider such an invasive, intrusive policy.


It's understandable why a company would want a peek at a potential employee's social page. Someone prone to drinking binges, blackouts, frequent absences - or maybe even owning a firearm - might be the type of person they'd like to exclude from their searches. Maybe they're just looking for indications that their potential employee posts a lot during work hours - or rides a motorcycle/practices a different religion/prefers Glocks to 1911s...

He asks an intriguing question though:

I was under the impression that companies cannot ask about marital status, sexual orientation, children, religion, etc. in a job interview. Since all of this information is quite likely to be part of one's social profile, wouldn't that run afoul of the rules that already govern interview questions? I wonder what a company that asked for a Facebook password would say if asked "Are you asking my my marital status?"...

Any one?

In turn, Phil Bowermaster asks, "Why Be Surprised?" in his take on the same issue:

Am I just being cyncial? Once we established that they can make you pee in a cup, didn’t everything else pretty much came along for the ride?

In a comment to Phil's post, I wrote:

Here’s another business opportunity – delineate and promote a “bright line” distinction between personal and professional data and create a site that publicly reports on and shames companys that ignore the difference. Done right, said employers will quickly find themselves holding steadily less-well attended job fairs. Those that make the correct correlation between these two events will likely make the necessary change; the rest will have their customers taken over by their successors.

Does this seem a reasonable response to anyone else?

Act Of Valor

Went to see the movie Act Of Valor today; I encourage all to see this film in a cinema if at all possible.

A reasonably straightforward telling of an entirely plausible-seeming (to me, at least) threat with all of the to-be-expected combat action people have come to associate with SEALS and Special Forces generally. HALO jumps, air insertion of SEAL Tactical Assault Boats, the STAB boats in riverine action, it's all included and beautifully filmed to convey both an accurate image as well as the impact caused. I found the commo discipline as well as the shooting under stress and movement (specifically, the reloading and communicating between fellow teammates) to add an additional layer of suspension of disbelief.

I suppose that the predictable-seeming plot point that occurs towards the end of the film (no spoilers here - spend the money for this one, it's worth it) is more than justified by the final on-screen scene. It stops being a screen writers dodge when you start to count up all the names of those who actually did just that sort of thing at some point during these last ten years of war.

Go see this movie; buy a copy when it becomes available on DVD, you will want to watch it more than once, I promise. And if you don't have to hold back the tears just a little at the end, I don't want to know you.


Update: Via Glen Reynolds, this is no surprise.

A Feverish Grasp On That Metaphorical Silver Lining

Get that stock market value as high as your fantasy allows. I plan to borrow against my 401(K) at the end of the month and every little bit helps.

h/t Instapundit

Space In The Campaign

Want to hear all about the actual technology required for a Moon Colony and Getting There From Here (and just how available all that stuff actually is)? Tune in to Fast Forward Radio at The Speculist tomorrow night (2/1/12) at the special time of 11 pm eastern/10 pm central to listen to Rand Simberg and Brian Wang, two guys who actually know what they're talking about and aren't running for any political office (and aren't indebted to anyone who is :)).

Yo, Phil, Stephen; I don't give a damn what else is in the news for this show at least. Tell the nice people who these guys are and then get straight to it!

They Got Me

I managed to pick up my first no shit trojan yesterday (FYI, I think it was hidden in some Java script within a you tube video and is called "blacole"), everything seized up and then my firewall went pffftt! I managed to ID it and remove it, but I still can't get my firewall back up, nor can I access my e-mail account. I can't get my desktop to uninstall anything either, so to the computer store we go - back in a week I hope. This little netbook allows me to do minimal stuff, but I sure miss that 22" screen and sound system.

At the moment, I'm mostly waiting for the 44 updates to finish. Man, I've got to start taking care of my computer gear a little more frequently one of these days (yeah, that's gonna happen :)).

Officially, it sucks to be me.