Arms and influence

In the lap of the laptop gods

I had all kinds of good intentions to catch up on posting over the weekend, but my laptop bit the dust. I'll try to squeeze in something tonight.

Hello from the cave

No, I'm not dead. I haven't joined up (though Pentagon standards may be low enough for me to do so). I've just taken an unexpected vacation from writing.

To some degree, my absence from blogging was necessary. I had some big writing projects in my new job that consumed my time. I couldn't justify writing anything else until these were done.

However, I can't blame work completely. I had a bad case of blogging fatigue, which happens when you worry that your effort is largely wasted.

Anyway, I'll try to get back on a regular schedule of posts. I hope someone is still reading.

Light posting for the next few days

Our experiment in switching phone and DSL providers blew up in our face. The short version: if you make the change, be sure to parse the phrase "phone line" correctly. It does not mean the physical connection to your house. Instead, it means an active phone number assigned to your house. Guess wrong, and you may not have both a phone and Internet access.

On the upside, I've learned a new term, "dry loop." Plus, I'm learning the virtue of patience, the kind that keeps me from punching someone in the face.

Training day(s)

I'm at newbie job training the next couple of days, so I won't be posting much. Don't worry, I'll be back soon.

Defeating the legion of dickheads

As a blogger, my "reward" for having a post linked in some other popular blog or web site (such as Wikipedia) is spam. Therefore, I'm forced to make some changes in the comments section, as much as I hate to do so.

Starting today, I'll be holding comments for approval. Apologies in advance for times when I'm not as speedy as I should be with these approvals.

On the plus side, you'll be able to use HTML in your comments--because YOU asked for it!

Rest in peace, Andrew Olmsted

Milblogger Andrew Olmsted died last week. Click here to read his self-obituary; click here to read a memorial article at the Rocky Mountain News.

Godspeed, Major Olmsted. You will be missed. And to quote from your farewell post:

If there is any hope for the long term success of democracy, it will be if people agree to listen to and try to understand their political opponents rather than simply seeking to crush them.

Thank you for your dedication to the cause of democracy, here and abroad.

The dark side of cat blogging

Other blogs have a tradition of cute cat blogging. To prove how adorable their pets are, bloggers post pictures of the beloved beasts, rolling on the floor, sleeping, playing with twine, etc.

I have to put up with a cat who posts taunts in the comments section of this blog. Baddas Cattacus (e-mail: killyousoon@pawsoffurry.com), I know who you are, and where you live. One more outburst from you, and I'll see you on Donald Rumsfeld's Island of Death for the final showdown. I fear you not.

Ch-ch-changes

After another hiatus, I'm back...For now.

I'll have to feel my way through the task of regular blogging. I've changed jobs--or, more accurately, changed careers. Last Friday was my last day as a product management VP. Next month, I start work as an industry analyst. In between, of course, are the holidays, but so too is a chance to get back on the blogging horse again.

Still, I don't know what this new career means for my blogging time. We'll just wait and see.

Meanwhile, let me just say that this career move is a good thing. I've wanted to try being an analyst for a while, since it allows me to focus completely on the research part of my work.

Fruits not fried

Glad to hear that Matt (of Fruits and Votes, a political science professor at UCSD) and family have escaped the San Diego fires. In fact, Matt is so OK that he's blogging about baseball.

P.S. Who created the entry for Fruits and Votes in Wikipedia? I have to create my own now...

He was just here!

I'm back from a self-imposed sabbatical from writing. I needed to take care of some matters in my life outside blogging: for example, I swore that I would eliminate every source of possible distraction until I hired a replacement for my department at work. (We were months overdue finding someone, and the recruitment process proved especially tough.)

To be honest, I also needed a break from writing while I worked out a few things about the future of the blog. I keep the rest of my life out of the blog, and vice-versa. Unfortunately, there was a bit of overlap, in a way that made me wonder what the right thing to do was. I think I've figured out how to square that proverbial circle, so I'm back in the writing chair again.

Wow, do I have a lot of catching up to do. If I'm writing about topics that arose in the news days or weeks ago, my apologies. I don't think these matters are settled, or else I wouldn't be writing about them.

Happy weekend, everyone

I've been traveling, plus Queenmommy's broken arm has taken priority. I'm back to posting this weekend.

Since I'm already off-topic, not getting to national security at all yet, I'll mention a pleasant surprise I had recently. After years of having the same TV, we splurged and bought a big honkin' high definition-capable replacement. From there, the dominoes started falling. Of course, since we had an HD TV, we needed a new HD DVD player...And while we're at it, the TV channels we were watching looked pretty crappy on the big screen...

This is one of the few times that I've been really impressed when upgrading technology. (Perhaps that's because, by comparison, the switch from Windows XP to Windows Vista was a totally underwhelming experience. Unless you have to, don't bother.) As movie buffs, we're watching some films as if we were seeing them for the first time again. Plus, some of the HD programming, such as the Showtime series The Tudors, is truly dazzling.

The HD upgrade happened just in time. While Queenmommy is benched, we have entertainment galore, at her beck and call.

Where'd he go?

We had a minor medical emergency here at Kingdaddy Arms, so I'll be posting little or nothing today.

Party in SF

Tonight, I'm going to be at a blogger event in SF. If you happen to be there, and you can figure out who I am, please stop and say hello.

Bloggus interruptus

Sorry for the drop-off in posting. Life intruded. If it’s any consolation, I’ve been MIA in other areas, including a friend’s birthday party. Stupid life.

Today, I'm a rover

I'm on the road today, so I won't be posting. Meanwhile, enjoy Tom Waits performing "Cold, Cold Ground." This song became the only song played twice on Homicide: LIfe on the Streets, a TV series filled with great music.  That makes "Cold, Cold Ground" as close to an anthem of that show as any song, aside from the theme music.

If I understand Waits' lyrics, "Cold, Cold Ground is about the craziness and indifference of violence. That makes it a good choice for this blog.

Widgets 'R' Us

As a public service, we here at Arms and Influence have made a widget-sized version of this blog. See the column to your right for the button that will help you use it.

The Internet: progressively tinier content since 2007.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming

I've finally tracked down the problem I was having with the RSS feeds. The short version is, Web 2.0 technology is still a bit twitchy. Or, at least, the way one service provider (not Typepad) was handling RSS was being helpful in an unhelpful way.

Technical difficulties

There's a problem with the RSS feed for Arms and Influence that is eating the time I would spend posting. Among other unfortunate side effects, the latest podcast isn't showing up in the iTunes Music Store. As soon as I the Typepad people help fix this problem, I'll get back to posting.

Podcast #2 coming soon

I’ve recorded the next Arms and Influence podcast, so now I’m just doing the sound editing. I should have it posted tonight, or tomorrow at the latest.

Format updates

ABOUT THIS BLOG
I'm continuing to play around with the content. It seems that Web 2.0 widgets can easily clutter up your blog, so I may prune back what I put into the sidebars. Since I occasionally talk about wargames (historical simulations, the stuff piled in my closet, whatever), I thought I'd add a brief list of the sort of games I've been playing recently. This neat widget (scroll down to the left) comes from the Boardgame Geek web site.

I'll be continuing to talk about wargames as a tool for learning about military history in the Arms and Influence podcast. I'm working on the next podcast, which should be ready in a day or two.

Podcast update

ABOUT THIS BLOG
The Arms and Influence podcast is now available via iTunes. Just search for "Arms" and you''ll find it.

The feed needs a little tweaking. Otherwise, it's official!

A stranger is watching

IN THE NEWS
One of the interesting things about the Web is how you can get into these "I'm watching you watching me" situations. I've been in just such a scenario for some time now--ever since I did this post, almost three years ago.

Whenever I'm curious enough to see how people arrive at this blog, I notice that someone is using Google to search for the subject of that post (a person, whom I'm not naming here). Now, I can see why, every once in a while, someone might be searching for that person's name...But once per day, with an almost clockwork-like precision that would have made Immanuel Kant envious?

I have no proof, only suspicions--particularly given the fruitless dialogue I had in the comments section of that post, lo these many years ago.

Podcasting is hard

ABOUT THIS BLOG
Doing the first podcast was a humbling experience. Writing this blog is far easier than recording a show. When I hit the wrong key, the fix is just a backspace away. When I say Um one too many times, lose track of my thought, or stumble on a word, it’s back to the beginning of recording that clip. If you’re like me, and you don’t hear your own voice that often, your replayed words sound odd. By the end of the first sound editing session, I wasn’t sure I was making any sense at all.

One thing I do know for sure: I’ll need to invest some time in learning the sound editing tool I’m using. Getting the sound levels right, fading music in and out, trimming gaps between words—these are important skills. Please bear with me while I get more experienced with this new medium.

Changes are gonna come

ABOUT THIS BLOG
Soon, I’ll be making some changes to Arms and Influence, starting with some minor cosmetic improvements. The big experiment will be the addition of an Arms and Influence podcast. Although the themes of the podcast will be the same as the blog, the exact content will be different. I’ll post more details as we get closer to the first episode.

Where I've been, where I'm going

IN THE NEWS
Some of you may have wondered why I haven't posted for a while. Yes, work has been busy lately, which is usually why I disappear for a few days. Yes, having a daughter start college also made my personal life a bit more hectic than usual. However, these are excuses, not reasons. I took this break from blogging for two reasons.

The first is dejection. The news of the last couple of weeks has been painfully discouraging. The "mavericks" in the Senate caved on torture. The opposition party in Congress continues to idle, wait9ng for that next political horizon that they never seem to reach. Afghanistan, the place we should never have neglected, is suffering from the US government's neglect. The Iranian government thumbs its nose at us, knowing there's practically nothing the US can do to halt its nuclear ambitions, not to mention other, dangerous parts of its foreign policy. The situation in Iraq continues to disintegrate.

The second reason for a pause in blogging is time to hink. I'm not convinced that merely pointing out the defects is enough. In fact, I worry that many commentaries amount to sterile excitation, which is worse than useless. Rather than directing people's concerns in a productive direction, many opinion forums, including some of the big-name bloggers, seem to merely reinforce their outrage.

Yesterday, we saw a play, Sam Shepard's The God of Hell. It was a dark satire of current politics, in which a Michigan couple have their house invaded, and their lives polluted, by a fascist, fear-mongering George Bush look-alike. The play has some graphic, on-stage depictions of torture, to boot.

I might suffer through this play, even with its cartoon politics, if I felt that it was doing some good. However, the play only shows the degeneration into savagery and authoritarianism. There is no moment of redemption, or even opposition.

Shepard's audience doesn't need to be told that torture is wrong, nor do they need to be outraged at the slow, steady eroision of civil liberties. Their thoughts and feelings are already well known to them, and well-justified. Instead, anyone who has something to say--from playwrights to bloggers to political parties--need to take us to the next step: what do we do?

I think that writing this blog still serves that purpose. Since I started Arms and Influence, I've tried to put current events into their strategic and historical context. People have fought terrorists and guerrillas before, and they've done a better job than the US government is doing today. They've also accomplished these goals without sacrificing democracy, accountability, and constitutionalism in the process. To that extent, blogging here still serves a purpose.

However, I think it's long past time to demand more of our political allies and ourselves. People need to know what to do. The Bush Administration isn't going to stop in its tracks because a blogger has pointed out some inconsistency in its public statements. The only way to deflect the US government from its current course--ultimately, a very bad way to fight terrorists--is action.

I have some ideas about what sort of political opposition needs to appear, but I'm not quite ready to talk about it. If, after further investigation, what I'm considering makes sense, I'll discuss those ideas here.

At long last, I'm back

IN THE NEWS
Kid Terrific is successfully moved into her college dorm, and she has started taking classes. All is well in the world. Work is slightly more under control, now that I've been back long enough to deal with the pile of stuff that just keeps accumulating while you're on vacation.

It makes me long for the world before e-mail and voicemail, both of which blur the boundaries between work and the rest of your life. Sure, physical mail keeps piling up while you're on vacation. However, despite the fact that 90% of it goes straight into the trash, you can get through a week's worth of letters, bills, and other correspondence in a couple of hours, tops. E-mail, however, takes me several hours--and that's if I'm lucky. Given the amount of e-mail I receive, both personal and professional, just staying on top of e-mail could easily become a second job unto itself.

I also think that e-mail and voicemail have eroded the psychological barrier between when you're working and when you're not. Even if you're not an e-mail addict, other people are the real problem. The ease of sending a message to someone who has left for the day, or is on vacation, about something that just popped into your head, is irresistable. It's also the bane of my existence: many people also think that, the moment you're back from vacation, you've read, pondered, and responded to their message. They have no visibility into the amount of other communication you've received in your absence, so it's an understandable mistake.

Every time I fire up Microsoft Outlook, I think that we should be re-thinking e-mail. As a communications medium, it has become too unregulated, too chaotic, and too voluminous to be useful. I'm about to change the personal e-mail account that I use here on Arms and Influence, since that inbox is so clogged with spam as to be useless. (No spam filter is perfect.) No amount of well-intentioned e-mail etiquette at work reduces the expectation that e-mail represents a solemn contract to respond quickly that the recipient has unwittingly signed with the sender.

Instant messaging helps, since it gives people an alternate way to contact you--something between the immediate interruption of a phone call, and the unpredictability of swift e-mail responses. With IM, someone can ask you, with little distraction, "Is it OK to talk now? Or should I send you an e-mail?" Still, IM doesn't solve all the problems that e-mail has created.

Well, enough grousing about my e-mail woes. Back to the topic at hand.

Back for a bit

IN THE NEWS
To regular readers of Arms and Influence, sorry to have fallen off the radar for several days. This week, the family went off for vacation. We had marathon planning meetings at work, which also demanded a large amount of time preparing for a multi-day traning event. I'm helping with the final details needed to get my daughter ready for her freshman year of college, and we've been remodeling the bathroom. All in all, a bad week for getting any blogging done. Too bad, since it has been an eventful week.

I'll be joining the family on vacation in the middle of next week, so posting will get a little sporadic again. I'll try to get caught up before I leave.

Back after outage

IN THE NEWS
Typepad was down during yesterday's narrow window of opportunity for posting. I'm back today.

Resumption of service

IN THE NEWS
I'm back to posting after a bit of a hiatus. The last few weeks have been a challenging combination of work, tax time, work, business travel, work, our daughter picking a university, and...Oh, yeah. Work. I should be back to a normal posting schedule this week.

Housekeeping

IN THE NEWS
I've been doing some long overdue clean-up of Arms and Influence. You might notice that, to the right, I've added a How to read this blog panel. I've also split the Links of note section in twain; there are now separate listings for blogs and various web references.

We now return to regular programming

IN THE NEWS
So, there were these holidays, see? And right afterwards, my employer chose to hold sales training to kick off the year. I got the privilege/curse of preparing a lot of the training materials, which was actually the culmination of a lot of work my group has been doing. Just before the training, I lost a full day of work, just when I could least afford the time to re-create it.

Which is a way of saying, yes, I've been MIA yet again, but now I'm back. At least I wasn't gone as long as the Religious Policeman, who has returned to blogging after almost two years of absence. I'm glad he's writing again.

A&I gets respectable

IN THE NEWS
I guess this blog has achieved some degree of respectability or maturity, now that it's linked from the official entry for Thomas Schelling in Wikipedia. My appreciation to whoever added the reference to my early post about putting Schelling into perspective.

Back to business this week

IN THE NEWS
A combination of work and the holidays have squeezed out the time I normally devote to writing for this blog. I'll be back to regular postings tomorrow or Friday.

Now you see him...

OK, I'm embarrassed that I vanished from regular blogging again. It was for a good reason: I was working on an invention.

No, seriously. There's something I need to do my day job that doesn't exist, so I had to build it myself. It was no small project, in part because I decided to use some unfamiliar technologies (PHP and MySQL) that seemed like the right tools for the job at hand. 

I'm at a point now, however, where the important work is done. I can use the tool, and so can a couple of my colleagues with whom I'm working on a joint project.

I realize that I'm being a bit vague about what exactly this tool is, but it really doesn't exist elsewhere in the world, as far as I know. If that's the case, I have to be careful about spilling the beans.

The post that almost ended this blog

IN THE NEWS
The last post nearly ended Arms and Influence. I tried several times to finish it, only to lose momentum partway through it. For the first time in my life-long interest in warfare and revolution, I found the topics too depressing, too overwhelming to capture effectively.The changes in revolutionary strategy over the last few decades have, by and large, increased the number of casualties and protracted the violence.

Sorry if the last post wasn't my best. I got it done, and I'll return to it at a later date to revise what I said. I needed to put it behind me before I could move on to further "official" topics.

So, what'd I miss?

IN THE NEWS
I've been on vacation from the blog for the last week. Did I miss anything?

Oh, right. The Bolton nomination. King Fahd died. Deadly attacks in Iraq. More about the London attacks.

I turn my back for five minutes...

I heart RSS

IN THE NEWS
Since I am pretty mobile these days--and therefore often disconnected--I've been reading the news and blogs increasingly as RSS feeds. I've reached a point of adoption where I can make two conclusions:

• There aren't great RSS readers yet. Mozilla Thunderbird is serviceable, but it has definite rough edges.
• I've started wincing when a blog doesn't have an RSS feed. It's much harder for me to remember to read it than if the content gets delivered to Thunderbird much like an e-mail.

Technology marches on.

New national security blog

IN THE NEWS
I just caught wind of another national security-focused blog. My blog borrows the name of a book by Thomas Schelling; this new one, Politics Among Nations, uses the name of a classic textbook about international relations, written by Hans Morgenthau. Definitely worth adding to your list of daily or weekly things to read.

Poli wants a blogger

IN THE NEWS
The Internet is truly a wondrous thing. Thanks to blogging, I've gotten back in touch with both a former student and a former colleague, both of whom are posting at Poliblog. Check it out: it's a great read, even if you didn't know Steven Taylor back when he played AD&D computer games. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Back from vacation

IN THE NEWS
I've been away from this blog for a couple of weeks, less out of choice than necessity. While there were good practical reasons—travel, the flu, a big writing project at work—in all honesty, I needed a vacation from Arms and Influence.

Writing a blog is both harder and easier than I thought it would be. It's easy to write individual postings, and I've been happy with how, over time, the "official" posts have accumulated to the size and scope of a proto-book. Daily postings are harder than they need to be, but I wouldn't approach them any other way than I do now. I wanted a forum for context, commentary, and perhaps even the occasional consensus in these fractious times. You can't get that from a pile of links, each wrapped in a few words of commentary. That approach works for some bloggers, but not for me.

The hardest part about blogging is keeping the posts consistent. That principle remained true when I was working full time and when I wasn't.  Life sometimes intrudes on blogging, and as I found, your daily mental wanderings back and forth over the same ground can dig yourself a deep rut. I listened to my own writing voice, and I didn't like it. Too many points were simply bilious, which is hard on both the writer and reader alike.

Realistically, there's no way to put a happy gleam on the topic at hand. War is, inherently, a forum for death, tragedy, calamity, and frequent stupidity. To drive down the tone another octave or two, we live in a difficult and frightening period of history. (However, an overarching theme of this blog is, it shouldn't be as difficult and frightening as it seems to be.)

Still, I was letting my frustrations get the better of me, which was a clear signal to retrench. One of my goals for writing this blog remains the discovery of common ground among people who otherwise virulently disagree over the direction of current US national security strategy. I wasn't doing a good job of erecting the signposts toward that common ground, a situation I hope to improve from this point forward. My next post is a bit on the mordant side, as you'll see. However, its punchline has a slightly hopeful element: if the US government has made mistakes getting into a war with Iraq, it can easily choose to avoid the same type of mistakes from this point forward.

Blog soundtrack (1)

IN THE NEWS
I know it's not Casual Friday yet, but on occasion I like to start the week on a relaxed note. Some months ago, I said that the official soundtrack of this blog featured the late, great Warren Zevon. I'll add a couple of new soundtrack artists to the list, starting with Steve Earle.

Apparently, if I had paid attention to Earle several years ago, I probably would have listened to a couple of his songs and moved on. Since I'm not a big country fan (I do like a few artists, Johnny Cash in particular), Earle's early career of solid but standard C&W tunes would not have roped me in.

Happily, my timing was good. Before I ever listened to any of his songs, Earle went through perhaps one of the most significant musical transformations of anyone I've ever heard. Now, he's a rock/country fusion artist, leaning increasingly in the direction of the former than the latter. It's not just the music, but also the lyrics, that have made me a fan.

Earle is definitely left of our current center, but like Woody Guthrie, he's someone who has something to say to everyone, regardless of their politics. No one I know would object to the core sentiment of the title track of his CD Jerusalem:

That I believe that one fine day all the children of Abraham
Will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem

A different song on the same album got the attention--and the enmity--of people on the right. However, "John Walker's Blues" doesn't excuse John Walker Lindh of anything, but it does use him to make better sense for an American audience the beliefs that inspired the 9/11 attacks:

I'm just an American boy raised on MTV
And I've seen all those kids in the soda pop ads
But none of 'em looked like me
So I started lookin' around for a light out of the dim
And the first thing I heard that made sense was the word
Of Mohammed, peace be upon him

If we can see what chord Wahhabist or Salafist beliefs struck with young man from Northern California, it might help understand the people in the Muslim world whom we should be trying to convince that we're not really the Great Satan.

Earle has definite opinions--but again, it's not as easy to dismiss him as some knee-jerk Kulturkampfers would pretend. The following lyrics come from "Rich Man's War," one of the best songs on his latest album:

Bobby had an eagle and a flag tattooed on his arm
Red white and blue to the bone when he landed in Kandahar
Left behind a pretty young wife and a baby girl
A stack of overdue bills and went off to save the world
Been a year now and he’s still there
Chasin’ ghosts in the thin dry air
Meanwhile back at home the finance company took his car
Just another poor boy off to fight a rich man’s war

And if you think you know exactly where he stands from this snippet, here are the next lines from the same song: 

Ali was the second son of a second son
Grew up in Gaza throwing bottles and rocks when the tanks would come
Ain’t nothin’ else to do around here just a game children play
Somethin’  ‘bout livin’ in fear all your life makes you hard that way

He answered when he got the call
Wrapped himself in death and praised Allah
A fat man in a new Mercedes drove him to the door 
Just another poor boy off to fight a rich man’s war

"Warrior," from the same album, tries--and succeeds--to echo the tragic sound of The Iliad. I've never figured out where exactly Homer stood on the subject of war, except that it was an unavoidable part of history. You could leap into the fray, like Patroclus, or sulk in your tent, like Achilles. Your choices, your consequences.

Earle is also a very funny guy. Case in point: Whatever your politics, I promise that you'll laugh out loud at "Condi, Condi." He also still writes Hank Williams-sounding ballads like "Everyone's In Love With You." He just does a better job of them now, both lyrically and musically. If you've never heard Steve Earle--which takes some effort, given the sad state of radio in America--I suggest you give him a try.

[All lyrics are, obviously, copyright Steve Earle.]

Word from Kingdaddy's castle

IN THE NEWS
Just to let you know, I've had a week of intense writing projects for work, which has made it hard to post on this blog. Now that the writing load there has diminished, I'm hoping to pick up the writing pace here again.

Computers are not appliances

IN THE NEWS
Computers are not appliances. When you turn on an appliance, it works. You don't spend an hour trying to coax your TV to turn on, or re-configure it so that it can find the stations it was receiving just fine a few minutes ago.

I'm embarassed by typos, but half the time, I lose track of what I'm editing because my computer freezes up. Or Outlook starts eating all available memory. Or I lose the wireless connection. Definitely not the behavior of an appliance.

In medias res

IN THE NEWS
FYI, my writing has had to take a back seat for a few days while I switched employers again. I hope I don't jinx myself by saying this, but it looks like this new job finally, finally blends my two careers, national security and software, in a meaningful way. Since I never endorse products on this blog, and I don't need to inject my opinions about counterterrorism into product requirement discussions, the two worlds should co-exist comfortably.

As I said, fingers crossed, no jinxes.

Housekeeping and blog recommendations

IN THE NEWS
I've been tidying up some details of this blog. For example, I updated the "About the author" section to include a better explanation of the two types of posts, "official" (containing the sub-headings Theory and Practice) and "incidental" (starting with the subhead In the news). I've also started adding links to blogs on the same or related subjects. I look for ones that may be critical or supportive of the US government's current policies for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, but provide more than just opinion. I strive to improve the quality of discussion about these issues in my own small way, and I remain convinced that we can obly bridge political divides by establishing some common ground of fact, theory, and goals. That work requires substance, not just opinion.

Therefore, I strongly recommend that you bookmark Armchair Generalist, one of the best blogs out there covering the inside details of US national security policy. The author is an excellent writer, so it's always a pleasure to read his posts.

I also found a somewhat different blog, The Counterterrorism Blog, that's more of an archive of important reference materials, such as a link to the 9/11 Commission's final report, and significant news items.

Both are worth reading, so I've added them to the Links of note section in the right-hand column of this blog. If you have other recommendations, please send them along.

All quiet on the Western front

IN THE NEWS
Life intruded on blogging, mostly in the form of a huge writing project I had to finish for my new job. I have a mental backlog of topics that I want to address--more perspectives on revolutionary warfare, the inevitable posts about Iraq, etc.--so I'll be doing my best to catch up to where I should be. Forgiveness, please, if I talk about one or two "old" topics, such as what Bush said in his second inaugural speech.

I'll also be catching up on comments you may have left. Sorry for the delay in replying.

Return of the King(daddy)

IN THE NEWS
After a couple of weeks away from this blog, I'm going to start posting regularly again. I'm happy to say that the job hunt has proceeded well--I've interviewed with several companies, and I'm in the late stages of discussions with a couple--so I feel that I can afford the time to write again. This blog is important to me, as you might tell. However, it also can be a drain on my time and energy, so I needed to put it on the shelf temporarily.

As we got closer to the election, I found that my writing contained more frustration than analysis. That was my cue to take a break, if for no other reason that, regardless of the outcome of the federal elections, I'd still need my objectivity to write effectively.

Anyway, I hope I haven't lost too many readers in the break. It's good to be back. Did I miss anything?

What's up?

IN THE NEWS
I had to pull a disappearing act for the last week for personal reasons. I'm still unemployed, so the job hunt, plus a few other personal matters, had to take priority over all else. I'll resume posting later today or early tomorrow, depending on how some career-related matters play out today.

I might write a bit about life in the involuntary leisure class, or I might decide it's just too whiny. I haven't decided yet.

Why the slowdown?

IN THE NEWS
I've fallen off writing this blog for a number of reasons:

• Since I'm still unemployed, I needed to focus intensely on the job search for a while.


• Several household projects came to a head, so I've been working more with my hands than with my brains.


• My daughter's school year started, so I've been helping her with this and that.

And, to be honest, I've been depressed. My motivation for writing flagged as a consequence, even though I find this blog to be one of the great sources of satisfaction in my life. As Dorothy Parker once noted, it always feels fantastic to have written. I have a lot still to write about, and the daily news gives me a chance to help put a news item into perspective.

In short, posting will pick up. Thanks for checking back to see what's here.

...And now I'm back

IN THE NEWS
The job hunt got a lot more energetic in the last couple of days, so I didn't get back to posting on this blog as early this week as I'd hoped. But now I'm back. The news has been a roller coaster ride, so I'll eventually have a lot to say about the day-to-day events in Washington, Baghdad, and elsewhere. However, I don't want to derail the extended discussion of counterterrorism in the "official" posts, so get ready for a biggie.

Kingdaddy takes a holiday

IN THE NEWS
After a highly productive week of writing on this blog, I'm taking the day off today. I need a break from the news, and since it's my birthday, I just need a day off on general principles. Have a good weekend.

Back from the Great Beyond

IN THE NEWS
Since the layoff, I needed to take several days to handle some personal business and clear my head. Now that we've reached firmer ground (still no new job, but immediate business out of the way), I feel comfortable returning to writing. Stay tuned.

Most of all, thanks to my family and friends. From as close as next door, from as distant as Germany and Australia, I'! blesse