Massive budget cuts

A video illustration of how $100M compares to $3.5T

Off to Africa

Mom and Dad are leaving tomorrow to go to Macha Mission Hospital in the Choma district of Zambia. They've done this kind of thing before, but that was about eighteen years ago, when the kids were all old enough to be ornery (I'm never ornery, but I was living on my own by then)( "Never"?--Mrs. Editor). Now they're used to having a passel of grandkids around--a "passel" being slightly less than a herd. It'll be interesting to see how Mom copes with ten months of being on another continent from them. On the other hand, we have Skype now, and even in rural Zambia you can get an Internet connection.
I suspect that Zambia is about to get its own Mme Ramotswe.

Beyond Folk Activism

That's the title of a post by Patri Freidman at Cato Unbound. He starts of by saying, "My new perspective is that the advocacy approach which many libertarian individuals, groups, and think tanks follow (including me sometimes, sadly) is an utter waste of time.", explains why he thinks that and what he's doing instead. An interesting article, well worth reading. I particularly like:

Government is just another industry, where countries offer services to citizens, but it has some unfortunate features. It is a geographically segmented monopoly, and since all land is taken, the industry has an enormous barrier to entry. To start a new government you have to beat an old one, which means winning a war, an election, or a revolution. And it has very high customer lock-in: there are barriers to emigration and immigration, and switching countries involves both high financial and emotional costs. These characteristics result in a horribly uncompetitive industry, so it is no surprise that existing firms tend to exploit customers instead of innovating to attract them.

That pretty much coincides with my view.

Call of the Woof

Remember Call of the Wild from eleventh grade English? The dog Buck starts out civilized, gets taken to Alaska and eventually ends up as a legendary superwolf. Diana thinks the canine member of our household is headed in that direction.
Until recently, the mutt has been content to sleep through the early morning (she is also quite capable of sleeping during the mid morning, late morning, siesta, pre-dinner...but I digress). Lately, however, she's getting up at a time so early that no self-respecting clock would even show it, and she wants to go down to the main deck and...patrol, I guess. Pace around and warn off the wildlife. Given that we have had no sign whatsoever of marauding deer, moose, wolves, grizzlies, giant squid, or carnivorous sheep on our deck, I'd have to say she's been remarkably successful. Most dogs don't know how to deal with a giant squid, you know.

Zombie Apocalypse

"The hardest thing about the zombie apocalypse will be pretending I'm not excited."

--Josh DeBoe

(I'm not certain whether he means he'll feel vindicated about all the thought he's put into it, or--given that it's allergy season right now--if he means that once zombies are lurching around, he'll fit in better)

Kayaking

This morning I took the first kayak excursion for this year. The wind was blowing to the north, so I headed south, on the theory that I'd rather be paddling into the wind when I'm fresh rather than having to fight it while I'm trying to get home. I got to Virginia Beach Boulevard next to Colony Pines Drive,

View Larger Map
but there's a low culvert rather than a bridge, so that was as far as I could get. Slim silver fish, four inches long, jumping six feet away. Half a dozen mallards standing on a boat dock. Two Canada geese at the water's edge, one eating grass, the other just watching me. Red-winged blackbird piping in a bush. A sound like a wind rustling through the leaves turned out to be made by hundreds of fiddler crabs retreating from the water's edge as I floated by.

Maintaining the Objective

"Maintenance of the Objective" is one of the principles of war; it means that you decide what you need to accomplish and then stick with it instead of getting sidetracked.

I was invited to take over a position in a naval game set in the Spanish Main, after the original player dropped out.  This game had eight players, each controlling a squadron of four ships. There were two players for each nationality, with English allied to Dutch, and French allied with Spanish. In this sort of game, the usual result is that the fleets go after each other and fight to the death. However, when I read the briefing material, I saw that the way the gamemaster would determine the winner was which faction had the most gold; and the way to accumulate gold was to transport goods from the Spanish Main to the island ports such as Port Royal. 

In the few turns after I took over, my Spanish squadron was to the west of the main action. I saw my allies were fully engaged with the scurvy Anglo-Dutch, and doing pretty well. 

My inclination was to swoop in and go for the kill--but that wasn't the objective. So....I disengaged and sailed west, potentially leaving my allies in the lurch. I captured one port, and thought about occupying another at the same time. In order to do that, I had to split my squadron, which meant that if an enemy had sailed over the horizon, I'd be in deep

 trouble--it would be his four ships facing only one or two of mine. On the other hand, I'd be making money twice as fast, and that was the point of the game. I decided to go for it. 

  My ship sailed in and took control of Cartagena...and the gamemaster announced, "The Spanish have taken control of the two most profitable ports on the map and have taken a commanding lead in revenue. The French are not allowed to dislodge their allies, and the Dutch and English squadrons are hors de combat. The Spanish win."

  And today the mail brought a prize, shown on the left in the photo: a 1/1200th scale ship of the line, painted and rigged.