End of the Line

This will be the last post I make on Hannibal Ad Portas. I am generally unhappy with the direction and theme, so I am making a new start at the lazily-titled Danimal Ad Portas. Since the blog began with a personal post, I figured I should come full circle.

Over the past year, I have overcome a demon in my life: my weight. I really don't want to take the time to weave a long narrative (Hannibal Ad Portas deserve a quick and painless end), so I am just going to give the interesting numbers and complain about things that weight loss didn't resolve.

Late August 2009: I start working-out daily with no goal other than lose weight. Scale reading: ~315 pounds. Waist circumference: ~ 48-50 inches. 30 minute moderate to high intensity elliptical machine sessions with occasional weights and stationary bike to break the monotony.

Today: I've thought about training for a half-marathon, but running for that long seems terribly boring. Instead I pursue less serious goals like beating the trainer in the Wii Fit Plank Challenge (broke through 300 seconds last week) and doing my first pull-up (not even close...). Scale reading: ~190 pounds. Waist circumference: bought new pants yesterday -- 34 inches. I do weight training + 30 mins on a stationary bike 3 days a week then run on 3 of the non-weight training days. 1 bonus day for baseball or stationary bike or a run depending on how I feel. I try to do between 2 and 5 miles whenever I go running.

My mother worries about me not eating. Honestly, the only dietary changes I have made are minimizing fast food (McDonald's/BK/Wendy's meals happen maybe every month or two), portion control (4 slice limit on weekly pizza nights), and avoid non-diet soft drinks like the plague.

At this point, you might be asking "what does he have to complain about, aside from the lack of Angus Burgers and pizza gluttony?" Shopping for new clothes is immensely painful and expensive, especially when it comes to dress shirts and winter clothes. It is virtually impossible to find dress shirts with the right neck width and sleeve length that aren't super baggy around the mid-section. All I want is to not look like a marshmallow and not asphyxiate.

My other pertinent complaint comes from my knees. I really enjoy going for runs and I would do it daily, but lately my knees have started getting sore if I run on consecutive days. No doubt the years spent north of 300 lbs. were not good for my knees.

Now the irrelevant things that weren't magically resolved:

- Jobs are still hard to find

- Ice hockey gear in Kalamazoo, very stinky, very bulky, probably doesn't fit, but I really want to get back into hockey.

- Women: This could turn into a treatise... I figure time, persistence and self-image realignment are the only cures. Self-image realignment is the most interesting part. It is very difficult to change how you picture yourself in your mind. I have trouble wrapping my mind around new pictures or what I see in the mirror. I generally feel more confidence and less self-conscious, but it is still difficult. I suppose the whole endeavor would be much less interesting if it were easy.

^^^ Not a treatise!!! ^^^

Hannibal has left Italy. Please join me at Danimal Ad Portas for less personal yet equally insightful content.

P.S. 8.9 stones, 3.9 slugs, 2.98 * 10^-26 Jupiters

My Rage is Unfathomable!

I don't truly rage about many things, but this is one of them. At the end of the season opener for the Detroit Lions last Sunday, Lions wide receiver Calvin Johnson appeared to make what would be the game-winning (or at least last minute lead restoring) touchdown catch.

So, apparently the rules for making a catch in the endzone are different from anywhere else on the field. If that catch were made anywhere else on the field, it would have been ruled a complete pass. Johnson doesn't bobble the football, gets two feet down, and gets his butt down. A long string of loud obscenities filled the apartment that Sunday afternoon.

They resumed when I found this:

The receiver's possession seems tenuous, at best, yet the two-point conversion is awarded. It's also worth noting that in both cases, the referee in the best position to make the call on the field was overruled. At least in the Super Bowl clip, that referee's ruling on the field was the one under dispute. In the Lions' game, the referee who signalled the touchdown was overruled on-field by some other schmuck before the video review.

I really don't want to buy into the conspiracy theory of the downtrodden Lions getting unfavorable calls from a haughty NFL front office. However, I'll play Glenn Beck (distasteful, I know) and ask the question: would this happen to Peyton Manning in Indianapolis or Tom Brady in New England?

Hiking the Himalayan Trail...

Before I get on to the interesting stuff, a shameless self-promoting shout-out. Not the most gripping material I've written, but it will probably be the most widely read thing that I have written thus far.

The aforementioned "interesting stuff" is also peripherally related to the shout-out. Today, at work, was a spring cleaning day in preparation for the massive renovations coming this summer for our office space. While going through the stacks of documents, we found this very amusing document. I've personally dubbed it the "Hiking the Himalayan Trail" document, for obvious reasons.

Hopefully, this will serve as an amusing start to everyone's weekend and a reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Life of a Colossus

After nearly a year on my bookshelf and three weeks of public transportation, I finished Adrian Goldsworthy's amazing biography of Julius Caesar. On the most recent Ides of March, I decided that this particular tome had spent far too long on the shelf and I had heard far too many good things about it. Naturally, I decided to dive into Grapes of Wrath first...

I could easily present a blow-by-blow extended review, but instead I want to have a discussion. Fortunately for me, Julius Caesar is one of the few figures from antiquity that still provokes thought and discussion among mainstream historical and political thinkers. If I wanted to discuss the contraction of the Roman Empire under Hadrian, I might have a hard time finding an audience, but Caesar is too much fun to not have an opinion.

As I closed up the book and tucked it into my bag, my brain started wrestling with the influx of new information. First and foremost, what do I think about Caesar, in general? My view has shifted over time. After reading Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (in high school, if you want to judge my level of maturity), I sympathized with Caesar and thought the tyrannicide was unjust. Frankly, I was pretty happy when the conniving Brutus and Cassius wound up on the wrong end of the sword. In college and up to, more-or-less, the present, I gravitated more towards the conspirators' camp. I still love Shakespeare, but it is important to remember that the events that Julius Caesar presents do not exist in a vacuum. A lot of stuff happened before the curtain opens and a lot happened afterwards.

That brings me to my conundrum: in a system as corrupt and decrepit as the Roman Republic was in the 1st century BC, was it such a bad thing that one man overthrew the system in favor of something more effective at peaceful governance? In a system where individual ambition was poorly capped, it was an inevitability that one man would eventually rise to the top (see the Gracchi, Sulla, Marius, Pompey). What made Caesar stand out, at least for me, was his political savvy and tendency towards clemency for political rivals. Essentially, the system was broken, Caesar thought he knew how to fix it.

Compared to other "tyrants" in Roman history, Julius Caesar's rise was bloodless (at least for the Romans, the Gauls and Germans weren't so lucky). Proscriptions were never undertaken under Caesar's regime and political opponents were typically offered clemency the first time Caesar beat them. Many probably pined for the days of Caesar once the Second Triumvirate started their bloodletting. This brings me to my second interesting thought: do nice guys actually come in last place every time?

When attempting to implement massive social changes on a short time table, maybe bloody/destructive means are the only way of achieving your ends. Case one: Caesar plays nice with the Roman aristocracy and winds up dead on the floor of the Senate - more civil war, more civil strife, political changes (good or bad) tabled. Counter-cases: Caesar kills and enslaves hundreds of thousands in pacifying Gaul, Octavian takes part in one of the bloodiest Roman proscriptions and becomes the first emperor, General Sherman's "March to the Sea" scorched earth tactics delivers a crippling blow to the Confederacy, Allied forces indiscriminately bomb (conventional, incendiary, nuclear) German and Japanese cities to end fascism. Was Caesar doing it wrong?

Cleaning House

In 1972, Richard Nixon was re-elected for a second term as President. Of course, the political exploits of that administration are well-known to those with even a basic knowledge of 20th century American history. The Watergate scandal stole headlines, and rightly so, but a different variety of political subterfuge was also underway in the final months of 1972.

In May of 1972, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. signed an interim agreement with respect to strategic arms limitations which was the culmination of SALT I (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks). In November of 1972, the-powers-that-be decided that a change was needed (warning: links to a small pdf file). A quick dramatis personae: Henry = Henry Kissinger (National Security Advisor), Scoop Jackson = Senator Henry Jackson D-WA, Al Haig = Alexander Haig (Kissinger's military assistant and Army Vice Chief of Staff), others mentioned are either those in line for the figurative guillotine or their replacements. It's worth mentioning that the attachment mentioned in the memorandum is indeed not present and thus bait for speculation.

The Administration went ahead with a full-scale purge of the ACDA (Arms Control and Disarmament Agency) and the SALT negotiating team. Naturally, this move was the cause of some concern (warning: another pdf file, a bit bigger this time) among those in the arms control community. Paul Doty was a friend of Kissinger's from Harvard and had politically left-wing views.

Ultimately, SALT II was an ill-fated arms control agreement. One can not help but think that a massive purge of the two government bodies primarily responsible for strategic arms control wasn't a helpful development. Even Kissinger would later express some regret over the realignment of the ACDA and SALT team*.

Raymond Garthoff, a member of the SALT negotiating team and victim of the purge, provided an interesting perspective in his memoir, A Journey Through the Cold War:

"Nixon may have had his own reasons for wanting a "new team" in SALT, as Kissinger too may have had. The impetus for the wholesale SALT purge, however, had come from Senator Scoop Jackson. In a private conversation with Jackson in the Rose Garden, Nixon had agreed to replace the SALT delegation with a new team, as he accepted a version of Jackson's amendment on equal strategic force levels in SALT II, in exchange for Jackson's support not only for the SALT agreements but also for the Trident submarine program, which Jackson had threatened to kill. In the final analysis, Jackson got even more: one of the two Trident submarine bases was moved from the Navy's preference for California to Jackson's state of Washington. But the purge of the SALT team and weakening of ACDA were also part of the deal."

Sadly, hunting for documents related to this intriguing Cold War tale is quite difficult. I've spent a number of days sifting through the Nixon Library documents in College Park, Maryland and my boss at the National Security Archive has no doubt performed similar searches and has a number of FOIA requests pending on this matter. Further complicating matters is the fact that the entire Nixon collection is being shipped out to the Nixon Library in California later in February. Demand for Nixon documents is very high right now and I plan to spend more time trying to dig up some new information.

Two of the other big players in this event have archives that are out of my reach. Sen. Henry Jackson has a library of his documents at Washington State University. One of Nixon's assistants, Fred Malek, was heavily involved with this whole affair and has a collection of documents in the Nixon Library, but all of his materials are already in California.

Perhaps the most sobering realization is that documents pertaining to this purge were likely destroyed...

*I would love to link the document, but I foolishly forgot to pick up a copy and I can't access the National Security Archive's digital database from home. This oversight will be corrected on Monday - stay tuned!

42.195 Kilometers

In 492 BC, Persian King Darius I was not a happy man. Seven years earlier, a number of Persian satrapies in Ionia (modern-day west coast of Turkey) revolted. With the support of the mainland Greek city-states of Athens and Eretria, the Ionian Greeks set fire to the regional capital of Sardis. Both Athens and Eretria withdrew their forces shortly thereafter, leaving the Ionians to their fate against the might of the Persian Empire.

Herodotus of Halicarnassus wrote of Darius' reaction:

"[W]ord reached Darius that Sardis had been burned by the Athenians and Ionians and that the man who led these combined forces and had designed its course of action was Aristagoras of Miletus. It is said that when Darius first heard this report, he disregarded the Ionians, since he knew that they at least would not escape punishment for their revolt; but he inquired who the Athenians were, and after he had been told, he asked for a bow. He took the bow, set an arrow on its string, and shot the arrow toward the heavens. And as it flew high into the air, he said: 'Zeus, let it be granted to me to punish the Athenians.' After saying this, he appointed one of his attendants to repeat to him at least three times whenever his dinner was served: 'My Lord, remember the Athenians.'" (Histories 5.105)

Needless to say, Darius did not forget and in 492 BC, he launched a series of military campaigns against Greece culminating with a showdown against Athens on the fields of Marathon...



The Athenians had plenty of time to prepare for the Persian forces. On the way to Athens, Persian commander Datis had taken the liberty of sacking two other supporters of the Ionian revolt: Naxos and Eretria. Athens needed to gather allies if it was going to survive.

Pheidippides was dispatched to Sparta to request assistance. Herodotus claims that the Spartans were anxious to get into the fight, but were held back because of a religious festival. A similar fate would befall the Spartans in 480 BC when Xerxes threatened to invade Greece. Another theory that might explain the Spartans' reluctance to involve themselves in major land battles is the threat of a helot revolt. The helots were the people from the areas conquered by Sparta in the Peloponnese, typically Messenia (southwest corner of the Peloponnese). They were a poorly-treated slave caste that also constituted a majority of the population under Spartan control. Every so often, discontent or outright rebellion would stir the helots and the Spartan army would be called in to ensure/restore order.

The only other Greek city-state that sent troops to aid Athens was Plataea (a bit under 50 miles northwest of Athens). All together, the Athenians and Plataeans deployed around 10,000 hoplites for the battle while the Persians brought about 19,000 infantry along with 1,000 cavalry. Oddly enough*, Herodotus doesn't spend much time discussing the number of troops involved with this battle, so the numbers are a rough average from a number of estimations delivered by scholars.

The armies spent a couple days on opposite sides of the plain before the ten Athenian polemarchoi (generals) finally agreed to attack. When Miltiades' turn as commander arrived, he gave the order to attack...



In an attempt to match the length of the Persian line, Miltiades stretched the middle ranks to only a couple rows of depth, but concentrated his phalanxes on the flanks.

One of the great questions still unanswered about this battle is why the Persian cavalry did not play a significant role. The plains of Marathon are wide and flat, making it perfect terrain for lightning-fast cavalry maneuvers. Some scholars have speculated that the Persian cavalry had been loaded back onto the ships in preparation to move, or the Persians did not bring more than a token contingent to serve as scouts. Despite the heavy armor and long reach of Greek hoplites, they were no match for a cavalry force that could out-flank them and run them down. The Persian infantry would get their first taste of well-trained, massed hoplite warfare...



Herodotus writes:

"After the troops were in position and the sacrifices had proven favorable, when the Athenians were let loose and allowed to advance, they charged at a run toward the barbarians. The space between the two armies was about a mile." (Histories 6.112)

Herodotus had a penchant for exaggeration. Hoplites, despite what you might have seen in the film 300, were heavily armored. Standard equipment was a large (three feet in diameter), round shield made of wood and bronze (held at chest level and away from the body), a bronze helmet, bronze greaves, a bronze breastplate (solid or scaled lamellar in construction), a nine-foot spear with bronze head and butt, and a small sword. One can easily imagine that hot and cold days made the work of a hoplite very difficult. In his book, The Western Way of War, Victor Davis Hanson also mentions that modern testing of Herodotus' claim shows that an average hoplite could only make it 200 yards or so at a 5-6 mile per hour pace. One of the tactical challenges that hoplite armies faced against one another was timing the charge so that you hit your opponent's line with more momentum without overly exhausting your troops.

When the Greek and Persian lines met, the center of the Greek line was quickly broken. However, on the flanks, the superior equipment and tactics of the Greek heavy infantry routed the Persians.

With the Persian flanks in full retreat, the triumphant Greek flanks stopped pursuing and turned to the Persian center. Suddenly under threat from two sides, the Persian center collapsed and began a hasty retreat to their ships.



Now filled with the excitement of victory, the Greeks mercilessly pursued the Persians to their ships and drove them into the sea. Herodotus states that the Persians lost 6,400 men in the battle while the Greeks suffered only 192 losses. For once, Herodotus' numbers seem reasonable considering the initial dispositions of the armies and the course of the battle.

The legendary Pheidippides was sent to Athens to proclaim the victory. About 40 kilometers later, Pheidippides arrived, announced the victory, and quickly succumbed to exhaustion. For those of us keeping count, he ran 240 kilometers from Athens to Sparta, ran back to Athens, marched with the army to Marathon, fought in the battle, then ran 40 kilometers from Marathon to Athens - all in the span of about a week.


A bare-assed Pheidippides finally gets to deliver some good news.

The Spartan army showed up with 2,000 troops a few days later to see the carnage, give the Athenians a pat on the back, then return home.

The Battle of Marathon wasn't the last chapter of the First Persian War. The fleet sailing from Marathon attempted to round the southern tip of Attica and attack Athens before the Athenian army could return to the city, but were unable to outrun the army. The Persians laid anchor not far from Athens for a few days before abandoning the expedition and returning to Asia Minor.

Though this battle wasn't particularly decisive as far as convincing the Persian Empire to avoid the Greeks, it did demonstrate, for the first time, the superiority of Greek heavy infantry over Persian infantry. It's worth noting that the wealth and resources of the Persian Empire was many times that of the Greek city-states. Though the Persians did deploy some Ionian hoplites in later conflicts, their army was heavily invested in light infantry, cavalry and archers. The Greeks likely realized their fortune of not having to face cavalry at Marathon. In later encounters with Persia, the Greeks became highly adept at choosing their battles in order to deny the Persians the advantages that their diversity provided.


*Later in his Histories, Herodotus spends a very long time giving descriptions of the forces arrayed for battles. To someone who has read Herodotus, it seems downright bizarre that he would give up an opportunity to weave an overwrought tale concerning the state of two opposing forces.

Update: I felt a little guilty not fully citing all the sources I used for this post, so here are the credits. For creating the maps, I used the fantastic illustrations from Robert Morkot's Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece and Simon Anglim's [et al] Fighting Techniques of the Ancient World as starting points. The artwork is an 1869 piece done by Luc-Olivier Merson titled The Soldier of Marathon. I also feel the need to mention that the edition of Herodotus' Histories that I used is quite possibly the best version available. The Landmark Herodotus edited by Robert Strassler is not only an excellent translation, but it comes highly annotated, illustrated and contains a great series of appendices.

A Storm is Coming...

...figuratively speaking.

My blogging has been sporadically present and relevant, but I am changing my mentality and content. I don't dislike my old content, it just feels very cliche and, to be frank, whiny. I see this blog as an opportunity to express some small sliver of intellectual insight inside a casual and entertaining package, and I feel like I have failed to fully exploit this chance.

To be honest, my life has been lacking academic discipline and I feel the need to reconnect, if only for a few hours every week. I look at all these really cool documents every week at work, but I have few outlets for showing other people this stuff and what it all means. Additionally, I still really enjoy reading and learning about classical Greek and Roman history. Oftentimes, I get strange looks when I tell people at work how many classical history classes I took at college. As I have written before, history, in general, is relevant and vital to modern life and classical Greek and Roman history is remarkably valuable for understanding modern Western institutions and culture.

My new approach to this blog is to create new[-ish] content instead of regurgitating existing stuff with my own thoughts. One might accurately assume that the new content will somehow involve what I mentioned in the preceding paragraph. I hope to get into a groove of one new post every week, starting Friday.

My Escape from Cynicism

Western society these days seems to run on two things: petroleum and cynicism. Before everyone stops reading and thinks that I have been replaced by a Thomas Friedman clone - I am not going to talk about American foreign or energy policy. The last ten years of American (Canadian, too, I suppose) sports are my concern. More precisely, how the cynicism of today's society, usually reserved for American foreign and energy policy, has infected the greatest bastion of hope, elation and small miracles.

As a fair warning to the readers, I am going to link to a story that, sadly, deals with Tiger Woods' recent public relations problem. Once again, some stupid journalism provides easy fodder for my blog.

I really hope sports fans don't remember the 2000-2009 period for this ridiculous runaway tabloid story. If I want to remember something unfortunate from this sporting era, how about the NHL deciding to unceremoniously fall on its sword, again, or the Detroit Lions receiving their karmic dues for destroying the career of possibly the best running back to ever play the game. Here is a short list of undeniably amazing sports stories from 2000-2009:

- 2004 AL Pennant series
- Michael Phelps @ 2008 Olympic Games
- 2006 Rose Bowl game
- Pat Tillman
- 2006 World Cup Final
- Lance Armstrong
- This:



-This:



Note: I may hate the hockey shootout, but remember, we're talking about cynicism in sports, not hypocrisy.

I will be among the first to say that humanity didn't start the 21st century very well. It comes as no surprise that the news and opinions are laced with cynicism. What a shame that a sports fan has allowed his cynicism to cloud his view of all the truly great experiences we've shared these last ten years.

Besides, every good sports cynic knows that the baseball steroid saga is the best story of the decade.

Muster the Hoplites, Alcibiades!

I've been pondering some ideas for a new blog post. Back in late September I was going to write about the Roman disaster in the Teutoburg Forest which occurred exactly 2000 years ago (in September) and how that marked the end of Roman expansionism even though the Empire would continue to thrive for centuries. Unfortunately, that post will have to wait for the next anniversary.

Since there were a lot of interesting news stories today, I felt that a blog post of miscellany would be appropriate.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced on Friday that once again, America would be a nation ruled by laws. Ten of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay will have their day in court. However, I might be giving the AG and the Obama Administration a little too much praise. True, criminal charges and trials are long overdue and I'm glad to see that the Justice system finally found the WD-40 to get the gears turning. The fact remains that Guantanamo Bay remains an open wound in America's credibility and a rallying cry for Muslim extremists.

Furthermore, I still have doubts that the prisoners at Guantanamo will receive fair trials. Are confessions or evidence given under duress really admissable in a court (military or civilian)? Granted, the current Administration is in a tough situation that they themselves didn't create, but the fact remains that no fair, legal structure exists to deal with this situation. Five of the prisoners mentioned by Mr. Holder will be tried in a civilian court while the others will face a military court. Who determines which prisoner is tried where?

I definitely do not envy what the Administration has on its plate. I won't even touch the issues of the executions likely to result from these trials or the irrational fear of just keeping these prisoners on U.S. soil instead of limbo.

About a month ago, NASA smashed a probe into the south pole of the Moon to see if there was anything interesting (water). Apparently, they found a fair bit of water. This is an interesting discovery, but not terribly surprising and does very little to convince me that the Moon is a prime location for colonization. The fact remains that the Moon is a very dead and unexciting place. The Moon would be a great location for the second human colony or a huge observatory. If NASA/America wants to push manned exploration, Mars remains the most promising destination. It has an atmosphere and liquid water and low gravity which make it far more interesting that the Moon. Propellant can be produced on site and the low gravity makes Mars an ideal hub for human exploration (it's easier to get from Mars to the Moon than from the Earth to the Moon).

Unfortunately, the American space program is having an identity crisis, Russia and Europe are content with low orbit and China is looking for a nationalistic statement with their prospective Moon mission. Meanwhile, the weaponized Ebola and Von Neumann machines are desperate to make us regret not having a backup planet.

This week I started reading a book called "Tides of War" by Steven Pressfield. It's a bit of historical fiction about Alcibiades and the fateful Sicilian Expedition. Naturally, whenever I read it, I am reminded of the Sicilian Expeditions undertaken by the latest Bush Administration and continued by the current Administration. I will be the first to admit that the historical parallels between the Peloponnesian War and today are fairly weak, but the lesson is no less relevant.

Athens was on the rebound during the Peace of Nicias which ended the war against Sparta (low level conflicts continued elsewhere, but they were proxy wars at worst). The depleted treasury began to recover and the plague subsided when Atticans returned to their towns and farms. Then some backwater town in Sicily with loose ties to Athens called for help and a demagogic Athenian named Alcibiades decided to use this as an opportunity to expand the Athenian Empire. Three years, thousands of talents, hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of troops later, the Sicilian Expedition was over and, for all practical purposes, annihilated.

Athens went in with no regional allies, a crooked, hubristic leader and emerged poorer, weaker and at war with Sparta once more. Alcibiades was tried, in absentia during the campaign, for holding sacreligious parties and decided to switch sides. Command of the expedition fell into the hands of one of the few Athenians who opposed Alcibiades adventurism, Nicias. Prior to the beginning of the ill-fated campaign, he pleaded with the Athenian assembly to reconsider. Once Athens was committed, no one thought to call the ships back when things went awry.

Athenians learned the truth about national exceptionalism the hard way. Probably a lesson about the limits to imperial expansion in there, too (Teutoburg Forest is another good one). For the folks averse to "irrelevant" ancient history, the Soviet Union learned this lesson not even 30 years ago in an all too familiar setting.

Peace through Fear

I am usually a fan of Time magazine. Their stories are typically decent and usually display a sliver of wisdom and enlightenment. Then I read one of their stories today about nuclear weapons and the Nobel Peace Prize. As I mentioned in my last blog post, nuclear policy reading can be downright chilling simply because of the necessity of level-headed discourse. This story completely blind-sided me with its callous ignorance of fact, history and humanity.

Mr. Von Drehle does accurately point out that following World War Two, the number of people killed in conflicts across the world declined sharply. Industrialized warfare, most notably in the First and Second World Wars, produced unprecedented body counts even if you take out those killed in Stalin's purges or the Holocaust. The rise of nuclear weaponry and the bipolar world order of the Cold War created stability through fear.

Though I may disagree with those that characterize Cold War nuclear strategy through the over-simplistic notion of M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction), the consequences of even a limited nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and U.S. would have been nothing short of catastrophic. Plus, the assumptions that damage reports would easily distinguish a limited strike from an urban/industrial strike and that cooler heads would prevail in the midst of a nuclear war are specious, at best. Tens of millions would dead in less than a few hours and more would perish in the following months and years due to radiation exposure, starvation, and the violence that would be created by the collapse of society. Fear of a nuclear holocaust kept the safeties on and the silos sealed.

Imagine, for a moment, that U.S. and British efforts to halt Germany's nuclear program during World War Two had been unsuccessful. Would Hitler and Roosevelt have been able to stay their hands under an existing state of total war? Truman was obviously unable.

What message does one send by suggesting that nuclear weapons are a tool of peace? One legitimizes the repugnant attitudes and ideas of men like Douglas MacArthur and Curtis LeMay and gives credence to people like Commander Eugene Tatom who infamously said, "You could stand in the open at one end of the north-south runway at the Washington National Airport, with no more protection than the clothes you now have on, and have an atom bomb explode at the other end of the runway without serious injury to you."

I also find it immensely disrespectful to the 200,000+ people that died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to suggest that nuclear weapons are tools of peace. Are the people who died in the years after 1945 due to cancers caused by atmospheric nuclear tests victims of peace?

In today's mono- trending towards multi-polar world, nuclear weapons are tools of instability. As inheritors of Cold War arsenals, the U.S. and Russia have and must continue to tirelessly strive to disarm and minimize proliferation. Regimes in Iran and North Korea are unsurprisingly interested in nuclear weapons. Iran is sandwiched by heavy concentrations of U.S. ground troops and has an ongoing rivalry with unofficial nuclear state, Israel. North Korea is still technically in a state of war with the U.S. If India and Pakistan were to go to war, what would stop them from using nuclear weapons to preserve their sovereignty.

Many (Mr. Von Drehle included) say that advocates of disarmament are naive to think that a nuclear-free world is possible. Indeed, getting countries like Israel, Pakistan and India to disarm will not come easy. However, I must ask why the U.S. still needs nuclear weapons. Russia is not our enemy anymore nor do they want to be. China's economic ties to the U.S. are too valuable to waste on nuclear rivalry. Were Iran or North Korea to acquire an adequate means of delivering a nuclear strike on the U.S. homeland or military assets, why would they risk the overthrow of their government via the massive conventional retaliation delivered by everyone that hates seeing nuclear weapons used (a.k.a. everyone)? If a terrorist group were to acquire a nuclear device and detonate it in London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, or New York how could those respective nations respond in kind with their "deterrent"?

If, through some cruel twist of fate, a post-nuclear weapons America needed nuclear weapons again, we have all the pieces we need to build a new nuclear arsenal.

I would rather see President Obama undeservedly win the next 50 Nobel Peace Prizes than see Mr. Von Drehle's irresponsible viewpoint vindicated.

You Might Want to Sit Down for this…

I’ve been pondering a way to break the proverbial ice locking in my little corner of the internet. Sure I could’ve posted about my internship or how the Forcier is with Michigan [sic] at last or my extreme discomfort when the Metro train shrieks like a banshee when going fast through dark tunnels, but that would be the same self-centered drivel I usually shovel onto the pile. It just so happens that a more noble and interesting topic found its way to me this week.

First some background information is required. As some may not yet know, I am now living in Alexandria, VA and I have an interesting job, with fantastic hours, but the financial compensation leaves much to be desired. I work as an intern at the National Security Archive at George Washington University in downtown DC. My boss is a research professor who works for the archive on a number of projects dealing with the history of nuclear weapons. I will admit that the topic of nuclear weapons policy is a morbid one and the more I read about it – it becomes a sordid subject. Nevertheless, I am always intrigued by the policy making process regarding nuclear weapons and its evolution throughout the Cold War.

I get to do all kinds of cool things like submitting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to government agencies and digging through the National Archives for relevant documents (often for the purpose of sending more FOIA requests). Like any job, there are some downsides. For one, the intern room also serves as a storage room and the intern chairs are uncomfortable. So I lack some creature comforts, the real downside is what I ran across this week: too much information.

One of the things I get to do is sift through excessively redacted government documents and try to find out what was excised. The best way to go about this is going through relevant published academic books and papers and, occasionally, other government documents. Very rarely do you come across something from 1945-1985 that is truly classified. Most weapons systems and diplomatic relationship have changed dramatically since then and full disclosure is hardly a threat to national security. So I was going through a batch of documents this week that were really tough cases. They were heavily redacted and fairly obscure.

One particular document was a 1971 hypothetical timeline of a nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the U.S. The timeline assumed a Soviet first strike, but it was oddly different from the typical timelines. Most civilian and military policy analysts agree (and plan) that a first strike would be opened with strikes from submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). SLBMs can best take advantage of the element of surprise since detection of launches is usually too late to mitigate damage. Most modern estimates predict that coastal command and control centers (a.k.a. Washington, D.C.) would have less than 15 minutes warning. More significantly, SLBMs also would be responsible for setting off EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) blasts that would disable most of the power grid. Strangely, the 1971 timeline excluded this element.

Anyway, this timeline was missing the timeframes (easy to find information, pointlessly redacted), moment-by-moment casualty estimates (pure speculation, but final estimates are also easy to find) and certain weapon systems (most prominent or secret 1971 weapons systems are mainstream or decommissioned today). While I was digging around for some answers I came across a report issued by the Office of Technology Assessment in response to a request from Congress for an assessment of the effects of a nuclear war. The report is aptly titled “The Effects of Nuclear War”. Usually when I read stuff like this, I’m able to stay pretty unemotional, but this one just hit me like a truck. It is a slightly long-ish read, so if you want the stuff that inspired me to write, read pages 15-39 and Appendix C. The whole thing is very well written and downright sobering.

Using Detroit as a case study was a bolt out of the blue and definitely hit close to home. Since most of the readers here have some familiarity with Detroit, I felt the urge to share. The cold discussion of the effects produced by varying the altitude and yield really hurts when dealing with a place that you know. The story in Appendix C is also a great read. It reminded me of The Road, minus the disturbing imagery.

Speaking of The Road, I really enjoyed the book, but I don’t know if I can go see the movie this fall. The imagery in the book was really intense and downright unsettling. I don’t know if I could handle that kind of stuff in a movie. Still, I think The Road is a great book to transfer onto film.

Fortunately, a lot has changed since that 1979 report came out. The chance of an all-out nuclear war is pretty slim for the foreseeable future. The U.S. has an administration that has shown limited interest in pursuing new nuclear weapons and is dedicated to stabilizing diplomatic relations with countries that possess large nuclear arsenals (thanks Kevin!).

Edit: I apologize for the hideous text formatting. My html knowledge is very basic and I guess trying to use a real word processor to write an 840 word blog post is a terrible idea. I doubt I will find the patience to fix this, hopefully the content makes up for the disheveled appearance.

That's No Moon...

The big rumor circling around the internet is that Lucasarts (the software developer for Star Wars games) is going to announce a reboot of the X-wing/TIE Fighter space sim series. Anyone who has dabbled in the space sim genre knows that TIE Fighter is one of the best, if not THE best space sim ever made.

I was searching for some more info on the rumors this afternoon, when I found this fantastic op-ed piece. As the author notes, there is no shortage of cultural metaphors and analogies referring to the American Empire past and present. However, the similarities between the TIE Fighter world and the post-9/11 world are uncanny. Media, even emergent media like video games, has a stunning ability to alter perspectives in truly brutal fashion. Blasting the good guys in X-wings out of the sky feels like the right thing to do at every turn.

As a just a game, TIE Fighter is immensely fun. As a specimen of how media can drastically affect the way we think and act, it is a powerful, if not slightly disturbing, experience.

State of American Discourse

America has a lot of problems. Protracted foreign wars, intransigent regimes in Iran, North Korea and beyond, bloated government programs and an unequal and unjust society are but a few of these problems. Fortunately, America has a lot of problem-solvers and wealth. With all these problems and potential solutions, why do so many problems remain unresolved?

Another problem with America is a tendency towards Attention Deficit Disorder in the media and electorate. Fringe issues like abortion, religious affiliation, and a person's upbringing have become litmus tests for candidates and loud distractions for whoever is in power at the time. The screaming of fringe fanatics often prevents discourse on any issue (especially if the issue happens to be their fringe issue). This bizarre social handicap makes the most recent policy discussions unique.

Of late, a lot of time and energy has been directed at reforming the health care system (not a fringe issue). Personally, I think the status quo in health care is broken, wasteful and shameful. However, I'm not going to discuss the reform plans. I'm not a health care expert and the associated phenomenon is much more fun to talk about.

To the dismay of Mr. Obama and many Democrats, Congress has been unable to push health care reform out the door before the August recess. So now we have members of Congress appearing at public events trying to get feedback from constituents. Going into this, many must have been thinking about this great opportunity to add more voices and ideas to the debate. Instead, a number of these "townhall meetings" have degenerated into shouting matches, disgruntled choir practices and opportunities for rookie police officers to practice kicking disruptive people out of public events. It seems like the fringe issue crowd has infiltrated the real issue crowd. What a shame.

This is one of those rare occasions when average citizens get a chance to talk directly to policy makers about an ongoing debate over an important issue. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans have mindlessly destroyed a rare opportunity to advance a national dialogue on health care reform. The culture warriors have put on new hats, but their tactics remain as transparent and tactless as ever.

One of the less than savory characters involved with this new chapter in public discourse is Rick Scott, founder of Conservatives for Patient's Rights (their commercials are frequently on TV and can probably be found on Youtube). Mr. Scott's career history would make you think that Republicans wouldn't want to touch him with a 12-foot pole. Rick Scott founded a hospital chain that was caught by the FBI defrauding Medicare. Three executives were indicted and Mr. Scott was ousted by the board. When all was said and done, the hospital chain plead guilty on 14 counts of felony and was forced to pay $1.7 billion in civil and criminal charges. He was never charged, but his involvement with the whole affair clearly gives him a dubious reputation.

In defense of the plebs, the amount of information available on the 1000+ page health care bill is thin. I don't plan on reading that behemoth (sounds like the job for a Congressman or journalist), but that doesn't mean I'm not interested or concerned about the contents. I know that a couple other people are probably thinking the same thing, but I save my yelling for sports events and video games.

The rumors that the meeting crashers are Republican operatives are probably true in some cases, but I think a lot of these disgruntled people have simply let their fear blind them. Maybe in the future they should run a Public Discourse 101 seminar before these meetings.


Yoda hits the nail on the head.

Sorry about the lack of updates recently. Life has gotten more busy of late and my upcoming move to DC probably won't slow my life down right away.

Things that Go "..." in the Night

This morning I was visiting the Dragon Age: Origins website for the first time in a few weeks to see if they updated any of their content. Naturally, they have a few new things, yet I find myself woefully unfulfilled. Whenever I visit websites dedicated to Starcraft 2 or Star Wars The Old Republic or even Star Trek Online, I leave the site more excited about the game than when I arrived. Dragon Age, of late, has had the direct opposite effect.

The website itself is downright garish in appearance. I wish the internet archive website had some records of the site from earlier this year, because it wasn't always this way. It used to have a black background and was a more traditional RPG website. Visiting the website 6 months ago, it was unmistakeably a classic RPG game. Today, I would be interested to see a poll of people visiting the website for the first time with no knowledge of the game asking what genre Dragon Age: Origins belongs to. When I look at the site, I see a game pandering to the great unwashed masses that hold up Halo, Gears of War, Killzone and Mortal Kombat as the great masterpieces of gaming*. It's bloody, violent, and features a loading bar consisting of an orc head slowly sliding down the sword upon which it is impaled. Classy.

Even the trailers and teaser videos that have been released lately are of dubious quality. From the beginning of the development, Bioware has said that they are purposefully aiming for a mature-themed game and would not hold back on the blood, sex, and language. Of course, I have no problem with this as long as the game delivers on its other promise: a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. Prior to the recent batch of content, all the trailers focused on the qualities I would look for in an RPG. Then, around the time of E3, the new wave of Dragon Age marketing began. Blood and sex were the featured attractions and cool things like believable/lovable/hateable characters, intriguing stories and epic setting turned into a bloody action slasher (a "blasher", if you will). Furthermore, the appropriate and exciting fantasy RPG soundtrack has been replaced with heavy metal rock music.

I realize that I can't put the game devs and game marketers into the same mental equation, but it's hard not to. When I'm excited about an RPG game and the studio releases new information, I want relevant RPG material that will get me excited (supposedly, that's what a marketing team should want too). Instead, I get "blasher" promos serenaded by Marilyn Manson. It feels like a betrayal of the community that will ultimately support and play the game for the months and years after the release date (while the ham-headed marketing target audience throws the game out because they don't know what an ability or dialogue tree is).

In reality, all this garbage marketing will do little to effect my purchasing decision. Several months ago, Bioware released a number of impressive developer walkthrough videos that demoed the gameplay and game editor. I was sold.

At the end of the day, Electronic Arts is to blame for the atrocious change in Bioware's game advertising. When EA bought Bioware over a year ago, I expected that something like this would happen. I continue to fear that development decisions will also be affected. The recent change in the Dragon Age marketing direction stinks of EA's baleful influence. Fortunately, Star Wars The Old Republic has the protection of the Star Wars franchise to block the EA marketing monster. Therefore, the SWTOR website and marketing is excellent.

Video Games | Star Wars: The Old Republic | E3 09: Jedi vs Sith Cinematic

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

On a Star Wars sidenote: Lucasarts will be announcing a "new, old game" on Monday. Granted, it won't necessarily be a Star Wars game, but I can hope for a new X-wing/TIE Fighter game.

My final hope is that the guys who design the box art work a long way from the guys who design the website and trailers. I really don't want to get a stark white box with a blood splatter dragon adorning the cover. I want a subdued and attractive box like the Neverwinter Nights 2 or Witcher Enhanced Edition (in my opinion, the best looking game box on store shelves) boxes.



*I can't deny that I enjoy games like Halo, Gears of War and Killzone. They are the summer movies of the video game industry. They are fun and occasionally thoughtful, but they cannot hold a candle to games like Half-Life, Starcraft, or Knights of the Old Republic.

UPDATE:

Well, looks like all hope is lost...


By the way, the file name for this image is "BloodDragonBox.jpg"...

Ducks and Hawks and Penguins

Ok, so "Hawks" is technically short for the Blackhawk tribe of Native Americans, but I'm sure the Anglicized tribe name comes from the bird.

Anyway, I write this blog post to inform everyone that my regular blogging will resume sometime next week. Just so this entire post doesn't turn into a non sequitur, I'm waiting for the conclusion of NHL playoffs and the three aforementioned avian species are also the mascots of the three most recent teams the Red Wings have faced in the playoffs.

Topics I hope to hit upon resumption of regular blogging: North Korea, Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), Electronic Arts marketing division.

Edit:

Ok, maybe I will add something of substance, but it's more hockey, so forgive me.

Again, I hold the management of the NHL in utter contempt for the current state of the game. Hockey is an amazing sport and quite possibly the most dynamic and exciting, but the national respect for the game is at an all-time low.

It's very, very easy to criticize TV networks like NBC, Fox, and Versus for their questionable marketing choices, but the onus is on the league management to make deals that are best for the sport. The NHL front office has done a great disservice to hockey in its business dealings. Here's the situation: in 2005 the NHL is about to emerge from another lockout season and looks for television deals. ESPN and Outdoor Life Network place bids on broadcast rights. ESPN has a history of responsible and reliable NHL coverage/analysis - Outdoor Life Network is a cable channel dedicated to fringe sports like fishing, hunting and bull riding (probably competitive woodcutting, too). OLN submits a higher bid and the NHL bites and the writers at Disney/ABC/ESPN begin drafting subtle jabs at the NHL to fill the airtime usually dedicated to highlight shows.

As the article states, NBC (the Notre Dame Broadcasting Channel one part of the year, Nothing But Crosby channel at another) also holds broadcasting rights for occasional weekend and playoff games (supposedly the rights for EVERY game of the Stanley Cup Finals, article explains why not this time around). However, NBC doesn't pay the NHL for these broadcasting rights! What a deal!

So, games three and four of the Stanley Cup Finals will only be available on a fringe cable channel. You don't need to be a NHL fan to realize that games three and four in a series with one team up 2-0 are truly pivotal contests. It is a shame that another terrible reality series takes precedence over one of the greatest sporting events of the year and every quantum of that shame lies squarely on the NHL front office.

Where the Coyotes Roam

All I have done over the past few weeks is watch hockey. Therefore, the content of this blog post will be more hockey (sorry to the folks expecting something different).

Anyone who is following the playoffs (the one with ice, not with hoops), knows how the Red Wings got completely hosed on a no-goal call at the end of game 3 which cost them the game. I'm going to avoid that minefield: the referee was following proper procedure, but it was still a god-awful call.

In my opinion, the big NHL news of the week concerns the Phoenix Coyotes franchise. The team owners filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after multiple seasons of poor teams and shoddy attendance. NHL followers are probably not terribly surprised by this development. Phoenix is one of those new-market franchises pioneered by Commissioner Gary Bettman. My dislike for Gary Bettman has been stated before along with my doubt in the southern expansion. However, the next part of the tale is where it gets interesting.

Commissioner Gary Bettman impressions: the less evil, more incompetent 20th century mustache dictator

Businessman Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of Blackberry, quickly threw in a bid for the ailing franchise. Again, those who follow the NHL will recognize this name from a few years ago when he tried to buy the faltering Nashville Predators. Balsillie's $212.5 million bid includes a clause to move the team to Ontario, Canada. This is where Balsillie and Bettman are at odds. I'm neither opposed or supportive of a new team in Ontario. Instead, this serves as another opportunity for Mr. Bettman to embarass himself and the league.

Bettman was quoted, "We don't run out on cities."

Now Mr. Bettman, you may not have run out on Ottawa, Nashville, Buffalo and Pittsburgh, but what about Hartford, Winnipeg, Minneapolis and Quebec City? Didn't the NHL run out of those cities? It might have been the right move to pull the NHL franchises out of those markets, but would this be the wrong move in Phoenix?

Now here's an idea that will rock the world: close the franchise and do a mini-contraction. Give Jim Balsillie a call in five years when the financial situation hopefully improves then give him a franchise.

Red Wings-Ducks game four tonight! Let's hope the Wings and the refs bring their A-game, for a change.

A Shout Out

I don't typically do "shout outs" to the blogs of friends, but Jackson made a great post on his blog concerning the recent torture "debate" and I could not hold myself back. I usually like to make blog posts with some of my own thoughts, but this time you can find what I think in the comment thread to Jackson's post.

Epic

Brodeur had a legitimate case based on the murky history of the crease-crashing and goal-front traffic goals (or no goals), but I think it was a good "no call." Marty was way out of the crease and the incidental contact is excusable. If the Carolina player had gone out of his way and deliberately interfered, I would be upset.

This series and the Chicago-Calgary series have turned out to be fantastic match-ups.

On a less epic note, Montreal fans are apparently the type of fans that boo national anthems. I expect this kind of thing from Philadelphia fans, but I always thought that Montreal fans were lacking those Cro-Magnon tendencies. On the other hand, those French-Canadians are not your proto-typical well-behaved Canadians. Unfortunately for Canadiens fans, they also booed their team to a disappointing first round elimination in four straight games at the hand of Original Six rival Boston.

It's that Time Again!

On Wednesday, the second NHL season begins. In a previous blog post I talked about those magical times of the year when sports' seasons coincide into an entertaining and exhilarating spectacle. This is one of those times. The NHL is wrapping up the regular season, NCAA hockey has the Frozen Four and the baseball season opens.

Starting with the amateurs, the NCAA hockey tournament was somewhat unusual this year. A heavy dose of upsets and over-performing teams made this tournament very unpredictable. Two of the big favorites, Michigan and Notre Dame, lost early in the tournament to Air Force and Bemidji State, respectively. Along the way there were a number of really entertaining games. Fortunately for me, the two games that I got a chance to see were both really exciting. The first game I saw was the New Hampshire-North Dakota game. After watching this game, my belief that hockey is the greatest sport was affirmed once more. Lots of exciting end-to-end action and a couple of hard-working squads made it possible. The other game I watched was the championship game between Miami (Ohio) and Boston U. Miami had never won a national championship in any sport and they had a very good chance to get their first. As long as you were a big Miami fan, this was another amazing game with an epic comeback wrapped up with a heart-breaking conclusion. Congratulations to Boston University's hockey team!

Now, onto the professional ranks. Here are your playoff matchups for the first round:

Eastern Conference

(1) Boston vs. (8) Montreal
(2) Washington vs. (7) New York
(3) New Jersey vs. (6) Carolina
(4) Pittsburgh vs. (5) Philadelphia

Western Conference

(1) San Jose vs. (8) Anaheim
(2) Detroit vs. (7) Columbus
(3) Vancouver vs. (6) St. Louis
(4) Chicago vs. (5) Calgary

I'm not going to go into a massive breakdown of each series since both SI.com and ESPN.com have done a great job. Instead, I'm going to just toss out some random thoughts, predictions and recommendations.

In both the East and West, the #3 and #6 teams are silent threats to every other team in the bracket. All four squads enter the playoffs on hot streaks and with great goaltending. If you want to see the best of gritty, passionate playoff hockey, keep an eye on the Pittsburgh-Philadelphia and San Jose-Anaheim matchups. These teams are regional rivals and have a general dislike for each other. Furthermore, Philadelphia and Anaheim are the reigning thug teams of the NHL, so we can expect some tight checking. If you want to see the archetypal sporting matchup of tremendous offense vs. crushing defense, tune into the Washington-New York series. Washington's Alex Ovechkin is reason enough to watch this series, as this highlight will confirm:



Now that I've paid my lip service to the rest of the league, it's time to talk about my Red Wings. St. Louis did the Wings a huge favor by winning their last game which pushed Anaheim out of 7th place. Columbus is a team that a second seeded Detroit team should be able to easily handle. However, Detroit needs to tread with caution. The Wings closed their season very weakly, winning only 3 of their last 10 games. Everyone knows that you can't just flip a switch and start playing like a contender, but the Wings are probably the team closest to having that capability. A lot of commentators say that goaltending is the biggest concern for Detroit and after this season, it's hard to argue with that. However, I will. Goaltending has been weak this year, but starting goalie Chris Osgood has shown marked improvement in the last few weeks and has back-stopped two Stanley Cup championship teams (including a dominating performance in last years championship run). The biggest concern for the Wings is overall defense competency. They have consistently shot themselves in the feet this season by making poor defensive-zone plays and leaving their goaltenders in impossible situations.

I expect the Wings will win the series in five or six games, but I will not be surprised if Columbus gets a win or two early in the series.

Getting a pulse on who is going to do well this year is tough. There are a ton of x-factors on every team this year and I don't think anyone has an early advantage. Will Boston be able to keep a lid on their emotions? Can the Rangers score goals? Is Martin Brodeur ready for the playoffs after a long injury recovery? Can San Jose finally transfer their regular season success into playoff success? How many games will it take for the Red Wings to get back into form? Can Roberto Luongo play up to the high level of Hart Trophy dark horse Chris Mason?