Stupid joke:

Why are the streets of Paris lined with trees? Becouse the Germans like to march in the shade.

Confucious say:

1. Man who run in front of moving bus will get tyred… 2. Man who run behind moving bus will get exhausted….

<p>Eliciting insights from junior officers during Moltke&#8217;s <a href="http://www.strategypage.com/articles/default.asp?reader=long&#38;target=WARGHIS2.htm&#38;Prev=418&#38;BeginCnt=476">staff rides</a>:</p>

<p><blockquote>Periodically Moltke would take the entire student body of the War College and as much of his General Staff as he could spare and literally ride on horseback to one of the actual invasion corridors into Prussia. Moltke would then personally describe the situation he viewed the most likely first clash between invading and Prussian forces.</p>

He would then turn to the most junior student present and ask for his plan of battle.  He would then ask the second most junior, then the third until he would ask the opinion of the most senior General present. Why? If the most senior spoke first would any junior disagree?  Besides the younger officers might come up with something innovative. They would then ride to a hill overlooking where Moltke felt the next phase of the battle would be fought and the process was repeated.</blockquote>

<p>Interesting. I just read about the same technique being used in the Russian army during the first Chechen war. Vyacheslav Mironov wrote in his &#8220;<a href="http://kulichki.ru/moshkow/MEMUARY/CHECHNYA/chechen_war.txt">Assault on Grozny Downtown</a>&#8221;.</p>

<blockquote>The time will come  for me to stand up  and  express my  point of view, like any other present here.  First, the lowest ranking officers will speak, then, all the way up the pyramid. It  is done deliberately, so that the opinion of the higher-ranking officers wasn&#8217;t weighing on their shoulders. At the end, com-brig  will do the  summing  up.</blockquote>

All through this period US intelligence on the specific characteristics of Japanese weapons and of their training levels was atrocious. Instead of arguing over what they did not know the Navy turned this handicap into an advantage….

…Slowly it dawned on the students - the faculty was giving the Japanese different strengths and weaknesses in each war game!

What were the students to do? Unable to simply learn Japanese strengths and weaknesses before the game they had to play the game in such a way that they could learn them through experience before any decisive engagements took place.

From Toward a History Based Doctrine for Wargaming (full text)

Again from Vyacheslav Mironov’s ”Assault on Grozny Downtown”:

At war we usually smoke, concealing cigarette in the fist. That way sniper wouldn’t see the flash. This habit worked around the clock, night and day. It makes sense like this. If your habits are different throughout the day, it is easy to make that one fatal mistake.

<p>In &#8220;<a href="http://www.anycities.com/user/conrad/english/grozny_eng.htm">Grozny. A Few Days&#8230;</a>&#8221; a man tells of living through the increasing evil in Chechnya during early nineties. One bit of homespun philosophy:</p>

Of course, not all the population suffered from malnutrition like our family. We were simply unlucky. As for my mother-in-law’s neighbors, it was hard to believe that the power had changed. They used to have a fully stuffed fridge with sausages, meat, bacon and caviar. Probably, I would have been in a clover if my mother-in-law were a jewelry store owner. But then I would have been unlucky with my wife, because one cannot have all the luck of the world. Well, it’s better to have a good wife, all the troubles can be overcome together.

A year in the life of Evelyn Wood:

After recovering, he was sent to India, just in time for the Mutiny, While there, in between fighting the sepoys, he suffered from, sunstroke, low fever, facial neuralgia, indigestion and face-ache. He then went on to be attacked by a tiger, fell off a giraffe, putting holes in both his cheeks and mashing his nose, then went on to burn a hole in a cheek with medicine for a toothache, and again suffering with face-ache and deafness. He also suffered from severe intestinal complaints and indigestion. He then galloped his horse into a tree, breaking his collarbone. This all happened in little over a year while in India.

<ul>
    <li>1.89 <a href="http://icasualties.org/oif/">US fatalities per day</a> in Iraq between the  end of major combat and the official turnover of sovereignty&nbsp;to Iraq</li>
    <li>12.98 <a href="http://www.cdi.org/russia/245-14.cfm">Russian fatalities per day in Chechnya</a> during 2002.</li>
</ul>

<p>But Iraq has approximately 30 times more people than Chechnya, making the difference even more pronounced. In occupiers-deaths-per-occupied-nation&#8217;s-capita, Iraq has been %0.52 as dangerous Chechnya.</p>

<p>Wow.</p>

Russia seems to be consistently increasing spending on its military, and aggressively improving its nuclear war capabilities. Interesting.

<p>From <a href="http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/archives/2004_07_01_healingiraq_archive.html#108863288893625231">zeyad</a>: </p>

<blockquote>
    <p>Actually, it took the unguarded Arab media by complete surprise, and I swear I could notice their confusion since it was very obvious that they hadn&#8217;t yet prepared anything to downplay the significance of the event.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>I got a good laugh out of NPR&#8217;s coverage of the early hand-over of Iraqi Sovereignty. The difference between the first news report and one four hours later, when they had had time to think up some spin, was quite apparent.</p>

I upgraded from a Treo 300 to Treo 600. Naturally getting a camera phone for the first time, I had to shoot lots of photos.