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Chapters with Links Below the Line

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Colin Firth,  Helen Bonham Carter, Tom Hooper

Riveting–Great Actors, Great (Real) Settings, An Absorbing Delight

May 6, 2011

There are other summary reviews, so this is primarily a marker to add this DVD to the other 125 that I recommend for smart people looking for only the very best. Phenomenal and heart-warming.

Here are ten other “life at the top” DVDs that I recommend in addition to this one (to see all 126, visit Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, go all the way to the bottom of the middle column under Reviews (I read in 98 categories so it is a long column), and click on Reviews (DVD Only).

manolete (Dvd) Italian Import
Saving God
The Young Victoria
The Answer Man
Henry V
John Adams (HBO Miniseries)
Gone Baby Gone
Primary Colors
The Theory of Everything
Fidel

Ron Paul

Ron Paul continues the noble tradition of founders and thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Burke, James Burnham and Patrick Buchanan in social-political conditions of the 21st Century. The book is written in lucid, vital and free flowing style without any convoluted jargon. I purchased the kindle edition and finished the book in 3 hours with several re-readings of some chapters/paragraphs.

The stage is set in contemporary America, and the intended audiences are likely the young indoctrinated subservient Americans, victims of Washington DC. This book could be the conservative bible for next two decades to effect political renewal of a tired, beaten and declining America. It deals with Paul’s unique approach as a practicing Christian, a conservative libertarian and a citizen statesman. The amoral and utopian aspects of left-libertarianism are absent in this book.

Indeed the word libertarian has been mentioned only 6 times in the text. In comparison, the word moral has been mentioned a good 109 times, and “liberty” occurs 191 times. The book emphasizes the true essence of Christianity and Christ as the prince of peace, not a messenger of aggressive/deceitful secular wars.

The writing is universal in its appeal so that a person from China, India, Africa, Islamic World or Europe will naturally relate to its contents. It defines the true meaning of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, the three principles of humanity. It is applicable to all human societies and aggregates, not just America. It shows the essence of conservatism and social order and extensively deals with liberty’s relationship with morality, religion and ethics.

The book is tabulated in 50 chapters and covers 5 principal themes:

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Ben Gilad

Core Reference Introducing Hindsight Games

January 11, 2011

Not a single one of the other reviews mentions “hindsight games” which come at the end in Chapter 12, where Ben Gilad, whom I know and admire, properly lists Helen Ho and Matthew J. Morgan as the authors.

At the age of 58 with 30+ years as an intelligence professional behind me, very little catches me by surprise but this is one of those exquisite “ahas.” For me, the insights into hindsight games as a means to retrospectively identify strategic, operational, tactical, and technical junctures, where participants can reflect on what they knew, what they did not know, what they had wish they had known, and how they might advise the next generation to state its intelligence requirements differently–for me this is an intellectual gold strike.

I have never heard of any of the war colleges or strategy centers or major corporations or NGOs doing hindsight games. This for me is HUGE, and Ben Gilad’s integrity is high-density–although the plan of the book properly puts the chapter at the end, after his concepts and doctrine and methods for business war games are outlined, this is the chapter that every one of the eight tribes (academic, civil society, commercial, government, law enforcement, media, military, non-profit or non-governmental) should be thinking about.

Hindsight games are a perfect means of both debriefing out-going executives and mission area specialists, and of transferring lessons learned from one generation to another in a super-professional manner.

I am reminded of Kristan Wheaton’s still relevant book, The Warning Solution : Intelligent Analysis in the Age of Information Overload, and believe that would make an excellent HindSight Game pre-read, pulling in seniors and mission area specialists to talk about what proper warning and better intelligence might have allowed them to do these past twenty years.

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John J. Mearsheimer

Cornerstone, Not the Whole Building

January 2, 2011

By no stretch should this book be dismissed as a three. While I might normally have gone with a four, I am settling on five for balance and because the author not only covers an extraordinarily important topic in a sensible measured way, but his endnotes are another book all by themselves–I recommend all readers start there.

Where the author falls short is in lacking a strategic analytic construct for measuring the true costs of lying in blood, treasure, and spirit. He tends to ascribe pure motives to leaders (for example, not at all confronting the raw fact that Dick Cheney committed 23 documented impeachable acts (see my review of Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency for the itemization) and Dick Cheney also led the telling of 935 documented lies best covered by TruthDig but also in Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq.

The book disconnects grand strategy (global engagement) from domestic prosperity in a manner I find disconcerting, and while the author is most able in documenting the costs to a democracy of lies to the public, I do not see nor feel the deeper reality: lies destroy the Commonwealth. Lies allow a two-party tyranny to sell out to the Arabs (not just the Israelis), to Wall Street–lies permit the mortgage clearinghouse fraud, the derivatives fraud, and the Federal Reserve fraud on the one hand, while also fooling the public into a national security policy that is clinically insane, catastrophically costly, and ultimately a self-inflicted wound that could be fatal.
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Worth reading for Nathaniel Fick’s introduction alone.  And then some….

Dick Couch

Dick Couch is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and served with the Navy Underwater Demolition and SEAL Teams in Vietnam. He is the author of twelve other books, including The Warrior Elite, Chosen Soldier and SEAL Team One. A resident of Ketchum, ID he is a frequent guest on radio and TV talk shows. He has lectured the Air Force Academy, the Naval Special Warfare Center, the JFK Special Forces Center and School, the FBI Academy, the Naval Postgraduate School, The Joint Special Operations University and The Academy Leadership Forum. Recently he served as adjunct professor of Ethics at the U.S. Naval Academy.

From National Defense University Review:

The message of this slim volume is simple: the two strands of a unit’s technical competence and its moral compass are equally critical, with the moral health reflected in the actions and words of our junior leaders possibly more important to combat effectiveness— especially in the insurgent environment, where the war is waged and won at the small unit level and the target is not the insurgent, but the trust and support of the local population.

Read rest of NDU Review

5.0 out of 5 stars A fantastic book to help set a warrior’s moral compass

April 20, 2010

ByJ. Rudy “Major, USAF” (Fairfax, VA) – See all my reviews

“A Tactical Ethic: Moral Conduct in the Insurgent Battlespace”, by Dick Couch, is a handbook reminding the men and women who put boots on the ground that actions that seem logical to you, can have a far different effect than anything anticipated. Having served as a Navy SEAL during the Vietnam War and professor of “Moral Reasoning for Military Leaders” at the United States Naval Academy, Couch offers his expert insights to the current and next generation of warriors. Americans need to look no further than the embarrasment caused by bored, misguided soldiers at Abu Graib to understand why a book such as this is needed.

Couch begins the book with a statement of the moral problems currently facing our military. He writes, “If the Vietnam War was the first war in which TV cameras roamed the battlespace, then Iraq and Afghanistan are the first extended stuggles in which digital imaging, text messaging, and cell-phone cameras are commonplace. Today there is far more opportunity for a bad act to be reported.” Couch proposes that the speed and ease of sharing that information will end up losing the fight for the “human terrain” — the support of the local populace, for which the insurgents are also competing.

With a basic understanding of the problem, Couch investigates how America takes the current generation of youth and transforms the insecure teenageers into bold, confident men that serve on the front lines. Feminists may feel slighted that the book does not focus on women, but Couch offers very compeling arguments as to why women are not are not central to the issues addressed earlier. He then looks at ethics training integrated with the basic training of the Army and Marine Corps, neglecting the Air Force because it does not engage in the same type of small-unit combat actions that routinely interact with the local populace. He rounds out his analysis of the warrior ethic training with by examining the (lack of) integration of ethics training with the advanced training of the various Special Forces.

Couch concludes the book by proposing “Battlefield Rules of Engagement (ROE)”, or the keys to moral success. He perfectly summarizes the the common vision of all warriors “All share a universal goal: to prepare appropriately for the fight, conduct themselves in battle with courage and virtue, win the fight, and return with honor.” In this age of pocketcards, I’m sure that the 10 ROEs he proposes will make their way onto the next set issued to the men and women going into harm’s way. They are succinct, understandable, and right on the mark. I highly recommend this book for NCOs and company grade officers — your leadership will set the moral compass for the men and women who serve under you. This is a great book to help you chart the course.

Phi Beta Iota: Advanced Information Operations (IO) must focus heavily on the spectrum of morality, both within blue forces and red forces, and all along the other tribes of intelligence.  Will Durant is not alone, when he says in Lessons of History, that morality is a strategic asset of priceless value.  The arrogant lose their grip of reality–and morality–before they lose their power.

• Actors: Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Matthew Macfadyen, Max von Sydow, William Hurt
• Directors: Ridley Scott

Righteous, Timely, Absorbing

December 4, 2010

I like the first and most popular review by the scholar. Here I will provide a snap-shot of my own and a couple of quotations from a rather good wikipedia review of Thoreau.

The film was longer, better, and had more stars than I expected, including William Hurt. Triteness was avoided. Above all, this movie is righteous and timely as we contemplate the present situation.

From Wikipedia on Thoreau:

The government, according to Thoreau, is not just a little corrupt or unjust in the course of doing its otherwise-important work, but in fact the government is primarily an agent of corruption and injustice. Because of this, it is “not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.”

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison…. where the State places those who are not with her, but against her,- the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor…. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.

The movie ends where I expected to begin. And now America begins anew, with a convergence of forces in 2012, where I had hoped it might end with peace and prosperity for all. The fight has only now begun as the public has awakened to the injustices done at our expense and in our name.

RIGHTEOUS.

Here are two lists of lists of summary reviews of non-fiction work that bears on the current and future nature of the world. Both are at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog under REVIEWS.

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)

Down at the bottom of the middle column I also have 116 DVD reviews for smart people that dislike run of the mill fare.

Buckminster Fuller

6 Star and Beyond–the Essence of Fuller, the Future of Humanity

November 28, 2010

I did not truly begin to understand the breadth and depth of Buckminster Fuller’s thinking until I read this book as it deserves to be read, with full attention and detailed notes. This is one of those books that merits–and received from me, a Work Table of core concepts, definitions, obstacles, and solutions, posted online at Work Table [link live at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog].

Although I heard Fuller speak personally at Muhlenberg College and distinctly remember him saying that a housing foundation could support the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner, it was not until this book that I understood in detail exactly what he meant: that we are wasting 90% of what we put into buildings. I have previously read and reviewed Critical Path as well as Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, and it is my great privilege to know Medard Gabel, co-creator of the analog World Brain and sole creator of the new digital EarthGame (in concept pending funding).

CORE POINT: True wealth is cosmic energy and the creation of means to deliver to humanity unlimited free energy. Among many other things this creates the possibility of applying energy to create self-contained homes that are lightweight, fully self-contained in water and sewage, and totally green.

CORE CONCEPT: Capitalism and democracy have been perverted by money–those who manage money manage those who manage politics, and they both concentrate on optimizing the false God of money, an abstract concept hardly worth its paper representation, while ignoring–even subverting–the possibility of achieving infinite cosmic wealth on behalf of all of humanity.

CORE CONCEPT: Predatory capitalism on the one hand, and controlled socialism on the other, are both extremes and both fail to meet the needs as well as the possibilities of humanity. Fullerism is at root a non-zero equation.

PERSONAL POINT: This book answers the question I could not answer when a senior executive asked me “what do you do?” Now I know. I am a Comprehensive Global Architect whose objective is Prime Design: From Waste to Wealth (the title of my next book, inspired by this core reading from Buckminster Fuller). All my prior works, including my most recent, INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty, have been a preamble to what I now recognize is my life’s work…I will try to earn another 25 years (I am 58, 58 + 25 is 83 — my family history suggests I will make it.).  I am still looking for a country or global organization that wants to profit from doing this.

A few definitions up front:

QUOTE (142): WEALTH [is] the measurable degree of forwardly organized environmental control, in terms of quickly convertible energy, capacities and performance ratioed system capabilities, per capita, per diem.

Advertising destroyed public trust by pre-empting “industrial design” as code for airbrushing superficial changes to move products to market, rather than seeking integral improvements that could be shared with the consumer.

Design-improved livingry increases wealth.

Synergy is the delta between the sum of the parts and their anticipatable outcomes, and the actual outcome not anticipated.

CORE CONCEPTS

Architects deal with the externalities of man.

“At rest” science and understanding (Newton’s paradigm) have been replaced by “constant change” (Einstein’s paradigm).

Bad housing breeds bad humanity and bad science–the time/energy costs and the materials costs are too high, housing is the socio-economic “runt” of all the professions.

Challenge is IRREDUCIBLE.

Design is innovative re-assembly that adds value.

Design-preventable includes illumination and prevention of corrupt exploitation of materials for inefficient or unjustifiable applications.

Energy mass, energy radiation, energy gravitation (E3) times Intellect (E3I)

Good design would reduce the per capita consumption of building materials from nine tons per person to one ton per person [this is in the developed world--these reductions would allow the extension of the lower tonnage home designs to nine times more people and more--with mass consumption come mass efficiencies.]

Industry is *supposed to be* the organization and application of collective knowledge and action that produces synergy (added value) over the sum of the parts in isolation.

Individual freedom is ESSENTIAL to the expansion of diversity needed to enable collectives to see the whole.

Intelligence masters energy, increases energy, applies energy.

Total Thinking is the intelligent acquisition, ingestion, processing, and exploitation of all relevant information in order to produce efficiencies and effects beneficial to the mission objective.

Wealth is intellect plus energy combined to create capacity [with more free energy making more refined capacity possible].

Worldwide commonwealth credit is both needed and achievable to provide mass-produced sustainable housing for all. That in turn frees up the five billion poor to create “infinite wealth” by combining their intellect with infinite free energy to advance civilization.

OBSTACLES to advancing humanity include:

Advertising in place of genuine progress [should not be a tax-deductible expense in my own view]

“Credit” fueled the perpetuation and expansion of rotten housing at great cost.

Housing is the works of design, the worst of materials, and the worst of applied engineering

Housing as the sucking chest wound in economics [mortgages should not be tax-deductible, this both encourages waste of materials on housing, but also enables the growth of financial fraud]

Managers lack the over-all philosophical discernment to be effective at seeing the whole and building to the whole.

Politics is VERY wasteful, perpetuating inefficient industries.

Specializations are attracting the most gifted, and this leaves the less gifted dealing with integration if they think about it at all. [I always thought this was what business and public administration programs were supposed to do, but having graduated from such a program realize they do not.]

A HANDFUL OF QUOTES

p. 25 “My envisioned transcendental world design plan would be inherently nonpolitical, because it would be utterly independent of any need for authority beyond that to-self-by-self for initiation of its study and development.”

p. 95 In relation to the waste of heavy materials in housing, “…that in this war crisis it is technically treason to allow ourselves to be short sixty-five thousand freight cars weighing fifty tons of steel each, which shortage is equivalent to the number of cars required exclusively to transport the solid foundation and flooring materials unscientifically employed as frozen compression elements to structurally support the tiny weights of one-tenth-of-a-ton load of men who comprise the negligible working loads of housing, or to support machinery from below that could better be suspended, etc.”

p. 246 “The efficiency of the industrial equation is directly proportional to the numbers consuming.” [In other words, capitalism focused on the needs of the one billion rich is long overdue for a redirection of focus to the needs of the five billion poor.]

p.247 “Serve one hundred per cent will involve a world design revolution, not just design of end-products, but of the comprehensive industrial network equations including world-around-livingry-service systems, at regenerative occupancy rentals, mutually installed in anticipatory facilitation of total world enjoyment of individually respected total man.”

p. 249 “Only the free-wheeling artist-explorer, non-academic, scientist-philosopher, mechanic, economist-poet, who has never waited for patron-starting and accrediting of his coordinate capabilities holds the prime initiative today.”

SOLUTIONS

Energy investments will define the future.

Need a world housing industry. We do NOT need water, sewer, and electrical infrastructure. Distributed housing and small cities connected by high-speed rail should be the norm.

Harvesting of scrap is the next needed Manhattan Project/Marshall Plan.

A HANDFUL OF RELATED BOOKS

Radical Man
The exemplar: The exemplary performer in the age of productivity
Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life
Human Scale
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny
The Knowledge Executive
Reflections on Evolutionary Activism: Essays, poems and prayers from an emerging field of sacred social change

Kent C. Myers et al

Beyond 5 Stars–a Foundation Work

November 20, 2010

In combination with the other books that I am reading this week, the first by David Perkins, Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform Education, the second by Curtis Bonk, The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education, this book I have read in galley form, by Dr. Kent C. Myers [strategist and process historian, a disciple of Russell L. Ackoff] with contributed chapters from a number of other individuals, gives me hope.

This is an extraordinarily diplomatic and measured book, a book that can nudge even the most recalcitrant of know-it-all stake-holders toward the “aha” experience that what they are doing [doing the wrong things righter] is NOT WORKING and maybe, just maybe, they should try Reflexive Practice (or at least begin to hire people that think this way).

This is *the* book that could-should lead to the first-ever Secretary General of Education, Intelligence, & Research, IMHO. THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest, done with Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02) was a proponency book. This book by Dr. Myers et al is a praxis book absolutely up there with the other 6 Star and beyond books that I recommend.

For a magnificent companion book, Will Durant’s 1916 doctoral thesis, I strongly recommend Philosophy and the Social Problem: The Annotated Edition. The intermediate books would of course be Buckminster Fuller’s Critical Path and Russell Ackoff’s Redesigning Society (Stanford Business Books).