saltykris

What happens when a politician, a leader, or anyone of importance doesn’t want to answer questions from the media? They can arrange to not be interviewed – which is not always a good answer because then the media can take them to task for ignoring the public. Or they can go on the offense. The can Attack the Messenger. This is the title of a 2006 book by Craig Crawford, a writer and political commentator, which focused on the battle between the press and the officials they try to confront.

The first amendment to the US Constitution includes the statement that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” When America was founded and the bill of rights was approved, the initial leaders of our country ensured this was included. Crawford reminds us of this history, and how jailing those who print what a government doesn’t want the people to know leads to tyranny. Instead, he shows that “only the free press can make politicians accountable.” The masses of citizens in America cannot come to Washington to speak to our leaders on a regular basis – this is why we have the media, for them to find the truth for us. But even with a free press that is allowed to question leaders, those leaders are not required to answer their specific questions. If instead, an interviewee can call into question the bias or integrity of an interviewer, they can easily ignore the questions out of moral rectitude.

There are numerous examples throughout the book of this – of how “vilification of the news media by politicians has diminished the power of an independent press.” Crawford opens with a story of a 1988 interview between Dan Rather and then-Vice President George Bush, where Rather tried to find out more about Bush’s possible role in the Iran-Contra Affair. Crawford details how Bush sidestepped many of the questions and instead attacked Rather for impugning his integrity. Bush even brought up the idea of judging an entire man’s career based upon one incident, and then mentioned an incident where Rather walked off of a set on live TV when he was angry with his producers. I went on Youtube and found the video – it is a testy exchange but I do not think Crawford’s discussion fairly accounts for how Bush did defend himself and his record during the interview. However, what did happen is that the media cycle story became about Bush’s and Rather’s angry confrontation instead of about Bush’s possible knowledge or involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair. Rather was blamed for inciting the incident, CBS received a slew of outraged callers, and Bush was not asked about Iran-Contra again.

Later in the book, Crawford discusses how President Clinton attacked the media when they accused him of having an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky and how President Bush’s (Bush 43) team attacked members of the press when they questioned the war in Iraq. In fact, politicians have always fought with the media. Crawford even states that “politicians and the news media are natural enemies.” Thomas Jefferson once wrote “the man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” But some of Crawford’s other examples don’t seem to hold up. Abraham Lincoln sent soldiers to shut down two newspapers in New York during the Civil War – not for printing tough questions and for finding the truth, but instead for printing forged documents stating that Lincoln wanted to draft more soldiers. After the newspapermen admitted the mistake, he allowed the papers to reopen. This is harsh behavior, but Lincoln did have the truth on his side.

Crawford also cites numerous examples of politicians and their staff’s spinning the media. He sees spin as political propaganda (interesting side note in the book: the word ‘propaganda’ was first coined by the Catholic Church in 1622 when Pope Gregory XV formed the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, or the congregation de propaganda fide). But spin is political propaganda. And if the media’s job is to seek out the truth, then it is not a press assistant’s fault for trying to make events look good for his or her boss, but rather the media’s fault for not digging to the bottom of the story and finding the truth.

I am torn by this book. I am highly sympathetic to the view that politicians do often attack the media, and even ignore their questions, thus not allowing the media to do their jobs. It certainly still happens, such as when Newt Gingrich vigorously attacked the media when asked about his ex-wife’s comments on an open marriage during the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary debates, or even better, in this Anderson Cooper video on terror babies. But at the same time, I feel that the media does not push its own case hard enough. They do have a pulpit and can call out leaders when they do this. After his interview with Bush, Dan Rather could have laid out the facts and specifics of what Vice President Bush had ignored, while also explaining how he had assistants with cue cards standing off screen prompting him on when to vigorously attack Rather. Instead, CBS (Rather’s network) issued a written statement stating that Bush’s staff had been notified that Iran-Contra would come up during the interview, and everyone just moved on.

Crawford almost seems to be yearning throughout the book for the 1960’s-1970’s; when 70% of the public trusted the media (following Watergate), as compared to only 50% now. But for this to trust to re-form, the media must demonstrate a lack of bias and a deeper commitment to the truth even when impugned. However, in the internet and cable TV age, it seems that there is more and more bias in the news. Crawford does discuss this, but the book could definitely use an update and deeper discussion of how the internet has affected the media landscape. People can now go online to their preferred source of media that reflects their own biases and simply assimilate news that reinforces those biases instead of confronting them with the truth. I do this every day to an extent, though I think I also try to overcome it by reading news from many different reputable sources. But maybe I should do more; maybe instead of reading the news that does reinforce my biases (Slate, the New York Times Editorial Page, etc), and then trying to find other neutral sources (the Economist), I should also try to find some sources that are actually opposed to my biases and review those as well. Then again, I don’t have all the time in the world.

Score: 6.0. Definitely an interesting book with absolute applicability in today’s world (and the class in which it was assigned reading for me), but I think Mr. Crawford is a little too biased in favor of the media.

I spent the winter holiday traveling – I flew to Africa and with some of my family, hiked to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. There was no listening to books on the mountain, but I did work my way through one of the Game of Thrones paperbacks – now I ready to watch the TV show. However, exciting at those books are, I will not be reviewing them. Side Note – Kilimanjaro was amazing and definitely harder than I anticipated. But the view from the top at sunrise, the experience, the people of Africa, and the time with my brothers was absolutely worth it.

Instead, once I returned to Cambridge, I listened to Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. This is the story of Louis Zamperini. Zamperini grew up in a family that knew poverty – he spent his youth leading shenanigans, stealing food, and living for pranks. This often led to him being chased and his running into the night to escape his victims, his teachers, and the police. He realized he could run, and began to run competitively in high school (with his older brother chasing him on a bike and smacking him with a switch when he slowed down…). Louis was fast, and began to win, and soon became a fanatic. After setting a record for the fastest high school mile time ever recorded before, he won a scholarship to USC, and began to think about the 1936 Olympics. Not yet fast enough to compete in the 1500 meter event (they didn’t have a mile event), he took a crash course in longer runs and won a spot on the US team in the 5000 meter event.

At the Olympics, Zamperini was far slower than many of the athletes from other countries (he did gorge himself for many days on the free food on the trip overseas…on the same trip that the rowers I mentioned in a previous review below were on), but put on a daring show and in his last lap, he flew through much of the competition and finished 8^th. Louis’ last lap even caught the eye of Adolf Hitler and he was invited to meet him in the stands later. Always the prankster, he would later get caught trying to steal a Nazi flag, and managed to talk his way out of it and keep the flag.

Once the war started, Louis chose to join the Army Air Corps and worked his way to becoming a bombardier (the book includes a litany of well-placed statistics, including the foreshadowing fact that 70% of the war’s 52,000+ Air Corps casualties came from accidents and not from combat fatalities). He played a key role in numerous successful and daring missions in the South Pacific. However, Zamperini was part of a search and rescue mission on a probably-defective plane, the Green Hornet, in 1943. The Green Hornet suffered mechanical difficulties and crashed 850 miles from land. Only 3 of the 11 crew members survived. Zamperini, along with Francis MacNamara and his close friend Allen Phillips, would drift for 47 days with virtually no food and very little water in two open yellow rafts (MacNamara died at sea after 33 days). On the 47^th day, as they sighted land and struggled to row to an island, they were captured by the Japanese Navy.

The story is good up to this point, but once they are captured, Hillenbrand makes you feel as if you are alongside them. She takes you through the pain, the suffering, the beatings, the agony, the disease, the starvation, the slavery, the anger, the resentment, and the unbearableness of what these prisoners suffered (all in complete violation of the Geneva Convention – which Japan signed but had not yet ratified). The villain of the book is a man named Matsuhiro ‘the Bird’ Watanabe, who physically and consistently tortures the prisoners under his control. Zamperini, an American celebrity, got the worst of it. At points, despite his enfeebled state, he is forced to race various people in Japan and offered extra food and other incentives to lose. Even though he is vastly undernourished and has problems standing, he still sometimes wins and finds way to inspire his fellow POWs. Hillenbrand brings his sense of defiance and his will to live to life.

Louis and Phillips both survive the war and make it home, but for Louis, his war rages on as he falls into alcoholism and a thirst for revenge over his former captor. Hillenbrand sums up the spirit succinctly – “The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent on those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer. In seeking the Bird’s death to free himself, Louis had chained himself once again to his tyrant.” But instead of murder, he finds his salvation at a revival tent meeting with Billy Graham and becomes an inspirational Christian speaker for the rest of his life. Zamperini eventually returns to Japan and forgives his former guards, all except for the Bird, who has disappeared. He surfaced years later, but when Louis tried to meet with him in the late 1990’s, the Bird refused to see him.

To put it simply, this Unbroken was a pleasure to listen to. I enjoyed it, and I learned from it. Never once did I get bored or want to turn it off or switch to music. Zamperini’s fight to live and ability to keep going was inspirational. But as the book shows, he is not perfect – his despair and thirst for revenge (fueled by alcohol) shows how we can all fall. The only thing I would have liked added to this book would be a little bit more reflection on his post-war life; the book makes it seem that after his conversion to Christianity, his life became perfect, and I am sure there was more too it. Score: 9.0.

Another side note: Laura Hillenbrand has chronic fatigue syndrome and rarely leaves her home. She does almost all her interviews via phone, but still put together and chronicled this amazing story. Definitely looking forward to the movie coming out on Netflix.

I just finished the best book I have listened to all year. The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. I feel like skipping straight through this book review and giving it a score now. It was that good.

Brown details the story the University of Washington crew team that put Seattle on the map in 1936, and despite some incredible setbacks, won Olympic gold in Grünau, Germany. The books weaves descriptions of life in the depression, the Nazi German government’s propaganda effort, the experience of being in a rowing shell, and the life of Joe Rantz, one of the rowers who powered America to victory.

Joe Rantz’s story is simply amazing. He was abandoned by his family at the age of 15. He pulled himself together, worked every odd job he could find from helping lay asphalt to logging massive trees to fishing and selling local salmon. He managed to make enough money to pay for part of the way through a year of college at the University of Washington, but he knew he needed a part time job. Making it on the crew team helps guarantee him this job, so he tries out, and despite the intense work, he makes the team. Over the course of the next three years, he works with his teammates and makes the varsity boat and learns to row and swing. He would go come out of his college years, along with a few of his boat-mates, with an incredible 10-0 record, having never lost a race, and won an Olympic gold medal.

In college, I served as a coxswain for four years. Later I rowed with a crew club for three years on the Potomac River. I very rarely felt a boat really swing and fly down a course, especially when I was rowing in it. But when I did, it was an amazing feeling. Rantz and his teammates found this swing. Despite being placed in a much tougher lane that faced them against much stronger opposing winds as compared to the other boats, despite getting off to a bad start, and despite having a stroke rower who was incredibly sick, this boat came from behind and in the last 200 yards of the race, overtook the Italian and German boats and won the race. I hunted down the video on youtube; the race is simply amazing to watch. I listened to the dramatic race scene while out for a run. I finished the run but the race hadn’t ended yet (the actual race only took just over 6 minutes, but takes about 15 minutes on the audible.com download). I kept running until it ended; I felt bad about finished my workout while the boys were still racing…and I wanted to hear the end of the story.

What is missing from this book: Brown also covers the intensive marketing efforts laid out by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi chief of propaganda, and Leni Riefenstahl, the filmmaker who developed a film of the entire games. The only thing I thought could be added to the book was a deeper description of the efforts by different Americans to boycott the games. Brown touches on the movement, but does not describe it in length, instead focusing on the rowing, which really is ok with me.

This book really touched me. Maybe it was the sense of pride in the American team winning, maybe it was rowing nostalgia, or maybe it was just a great story that was very well written. Score: 9.5.

There have been five mass extinctions in the history of the world. In The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert (a science writer for the New Yorker) argues that we are in the middle of, and that we are causing, a sixth extinction. In simple terms that the lay person can understand, she weaves the history of the five major extinctions, and the fate of flora and fauna today, through the stories of a variety of different species. She travels the world, studying animals that are no longer with us, and using them to explain how species have died out. For example, the ammonite, a tiny marine invertebrate mollusk, lived during the cretaceous period. Kolbert uses their history to describe the Cretaceous period and how it ended when a giant asteroid smashed into the Gulf of Mexico (also killing most of the dinosaurs).

At one point, people did not believe in the idea of extinction. It wasn’t until the very end of the 1700’s that Georges Cuvier, a French naturalist, studied the fossils of the American mastodon. The mastodon died out 1,3000 years ago – which Kolbert notes just happens to coincide with the spread of humans throughout the world. Cuvier determined they were a species that no longer existed. His contemporaries believed that these bones were the remains of rhinos or elephants who simply no longer lived in that North America. But Cuvier shocked the world with his theory and helped pave the way for scientists like Charles Darwin, and helped show that species are constantly changing, dying out, and morphing into something new.

Kolbert’s stories that really touched me were the ones that described man-induced extinction. One chapter is devoted to the Great Auk, a 3-ft tall flightless bird that lived on rocky islands in the North Atlantic and the East coast of North America. These birds once were everywhere, and were easily killed as food for visiting ships and even caught for feather pillows and mattresses. They were never able to build up a natural defense to man, and their slow reproduction cycle led to their death as they were overhunted in the 1700’s and 1800’s. The last two known Great Auk’s were killed off the coast of Iceland in 1844 by men looking to capture one for a collector. There are 78 remaining skins of Great Auks out there in the world, in various museums and collections, but the birds will never be seen walking and swimming again.

In a similar manner, we (humanity) are slowly killing off the coral reefs around the world. Kolbert discusses global warming and its counterpart – ocean acidification – and shows how there are traumatic effects of this climate change on huge numbers of species. She visits the Great Barrier Reef and swims among the coral (providing a lengthy and vivid overview of life under the waves), and shows that as the oceans become more acidic, reefs are slowly dying off as they can no longer calcify as fast as they are eaten by fish and beaten by the waves. These major changes in the global climate, which have dramatically taken place as the world has developed industrially over the past 150 years, are driving Kolbert’s ‘sixth extinction’ and are caused “solely by humanity’s transformation of the ecological landscape.”

The book is not all gloom and doom. Kolbert highlights the huge amount of good and the work that many are doing to help save a variety of species. Her best example is an intense description of how zoo veterinarians are trying to impregnate and breed Sumatran Rhinos. She notes that “in an ironic twist, humans have brought the species so low, that it seems only heroic human efforts can save it.” I will leave the details of the breeding work for you to find in the book, but suffice it to say, it gets juicy.

What is missing from this book: I wish Kolbert had delved a little more into the arguments surrounding climate change, even if only to break them down and prove her beliefs. She takes global warming and ocean acidification as entirely man made, and doesn’t acknowledge that some believe otherwise. She does acknowledge that as climates change, new species evolve, but doesn’t really explain the full value of attempting to save older species. There are many reasons (they are beautiful, diversity helps us all, we can learn from other species, etc), but I felt the book could have been strengthened with a discussion of these motives.

Favorite line in the book – “in life, as in mutual funds, past performance is no guarantee of future results.” The world is changing right now, and these changes are driving many species to their end. This is sad and even tragic. But at the same time, new species will develop and the cycle will continue, just like the world of mammals slowly grew out of the death of the dinosaurs. Score: 7.

Note: When I was thinking of buying this book, I read a much more passionate and informed book review by former Vice President Al Gore.  If you are interested, it is worth a read.

Two weeks ago I finished The Innovators by Walter Isaacson. The books starts in 1812 when Lord Byron, the famous English poet, stood in the English House of Lords, and decried the “adoption of enlarged machinery” while defending the Luddite textile workers who were forming mobs and smashing spinning looms to protect their livelihoods. Byron would find himself on the wrong side of history as the industrial revolution took off at a whirlwind pace and technology quickly displaced workers around the world over the next two centuries.  His daughter, on the other hand, would end up helping make history. Ada Lovelace went on to work with Charles Babbage in the 1840’s and described, designed, and attempted to build the world’s first computer.  Ada saw the value of a machine that ‘weaves algebraical patterns’ like a loom could weave patterns of flowers and leaves and wrote theoretical treatises on how such a machine could be programmed.

Lovelace and Babbage are just two of the innovators described in The Innovators. Isaacson speeds through 560 pages discussing the development of the technology that led to and was a part of the digital revolution. Skipping from Lovelace to the mathematical machines of the 1930’s and Alan Turing’s efforts to break German codes during the Second World War, through the invention of transistors, microprocessors, the mouse, Windows, the Internet, and even Twitter, Isaacson provides an overview of what made our electronic world of today possible.

Isaacson squarely places his focus on the individuals who made these inventions possible. What he finds is the invention of computers, like other great innovations, “are usually the result of ideas that flow from a large number of sources…not from an individual brainstorm but from a collaboratively woven tapestry of creativity.” He shows that innovation is “usually a group effort involving a group effort between visionaries and engineers, and that creativity comes from many sources. Only in story books do inventions come like a thunderbolt or a light bulb popping out of the head of an individual in a basement or garret or garage.” Rather, the “sparks come from ideas rubbing against each other rather than bolts out of the blue.” From Babbage and Lovelave to the founders of Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (who both grew out of early careers at Atari and Hewlett Packard, respectively), Isaacson finds teams, often filled with people of different minds and specialties, who worked together and built off those that came before them and each other’s thinking to develop new products and ideas.

However, this leads to a large dilemma. If you are inventing a new product that you think will make you rich, but you used others’ ideas to help you along the way, how can you claim credit for the product without impinging on the rights of those whose ideas you used? One solution is placing materials in the public domain, or open sourcing them, which “can spur innovation through the rapid dissemination and crowdsourced improvement of ideas.” This is how the world wide web hypertext project was released and spread so rapidly, now seen on all of our computers as the WWW as part of a website address. On the other hand, protecting intellectual property rights allow inventors to gain profit, sometimes hugely so, from their proprietary ideas. Marketplace competition and financial reward are obviously a huge motivation for developing new ideas. This struggle is waged in the technology world throughout the book, from John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckhart who built the ENIAC (described below), and had their patent invalidated in 1973 after courts ruled some of their ideas were copied from others, to Steve Jobs taking Bill Gates to court in 1984 for using Apple’s ideas in their initial version of Windows software. This has led directly to the situation we are in today: Apple and Google both now spend more on patent lawsuits and payments than on research and development.

Another impediment to innovation is being stuck in a past paradigm. AT&T initially balked at the idea of packet-switching, one of the key ideas that underpinned the rise of the internet. Market driven companies can be fearful of new technologies and research if it involves high cost and new, unproven ideas. One solution pushed by President Truman was to ensure the government was involved in innovation and releasing these ideas to the public. Through the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation, government actually provided roughly the same level of technology R&D funding as private industry from the 1950’s through the 1980’s, leading to concepts such as computer networking, hypertexts, graphical user interfaces (like Windows), and the internet.

Along the way, Isaacson includes an assortment of well-placed history for the reader. For example, in 1945 a moth flew into Harvard University’s Mark II calculator, and clogged a relay. When the technicians found it, they called it the “first actual case of a bug being found,” leading to the term debugging. There is also the story of ENIAC, the first electronic, general-purpose, programmable computer built during World War II, with its cast of male technicians and women recruited for the ‘lesser’ purpose of programming the machine. One of the women later commented that “the boys with their toys thought that assembling the hardware was the most important task, and thus a man’s job.” The six women, all mathematicians from across the nation, would go on to prove to the world that the “programming of a computer could be just as significant as [its] design.” Isaacson also ties the invention of the transistor to the rise of rock and roll. Apparently, Elvis Presley’s first commercial recording was released at same time as small pocket transistor radios hit the market – the radio became a personal device that allowed people to listen to their own music, including rebellious kids who wanted to tune out their parents.

So what did I learn from this? Much of our work relates to new technologies, but even in those areas that don’t, such as leadership, management, communication, and coordination, we must not be afraid of new ideas. Instead, we must be willing to test them out and embrace the concepts that prove fruitful. We must be willing to reinvent ourselves and the ways we do business in order to remain relevant, fresh, and able to provide the best possible service to the public. To develop these new ideas, we should encourage collaboration amongst different specialties – bring people with different backgrounds and ideas together and let them solve problems without overt amounts of direction. And when we develop and create new concepts, we should share those with the rest of the world – as President Truman showed, even government can develop good ideas for the public. Innovation results from working together and building on those who have come before – and with innovation can come the seismic shifts that will change the shape of the globe – just like Ada Lovelace and Charles Baggage’s ideas 150 years ago helped shape the digital revolution and the world we live in today.

What was wrong with this book: well, to be honest, I got lost in a few of the technical details (I sometimes had to google and Wikipedia ideas to understand them). These got a little bogged down and confusing listening to them – the book could have used simpler explanations showing what the different types of computers and other inventions did and how they functions. But other than that, I enjoyed the history and the idea that people working together can change the world. Score: 6.5.

Earlier this semester, I wrote a critique of the Coast Guard Cutter EAGLE’s Wikipedia page. As I approach the end of this class, I am now facing the final project: editing the page and adding 3,000 words to make it more comprehensive. I plan to approach this in a few different ways: adding a significant section describing the training mission, reorganizing the article and boosting the section describing how the Barque sails, editing and adding additional historical details on the ship, and sourcing many of the facts in the article.

The Training Mission:

The current Wikipedia page barely touches on one of the most important aspect of EAGLE-its training mission. EAGLE is a living leadership laboratory. The sailing, the work on deck, the watches, the classes-they are all designed to both teach specific skillsets and technical capabilities while also instilling key leadership concepts in the future officers. Over the course of a deployment, the crew slowly works their way from leading and personally directing the work onboard to observing as the upperclass and senior cadets take the lead. At the same time, the junior cadets join together as a team and must work together to ensure that the sails can be properly set and trimmed, the ship can maneuver through the wind, and that the plan of the day can be carried forward. The goal of the crew is that by the end of a deployment, the crew is simply approving and observing as the cadets run the entire ship.

The Sailing:

While the Wikipedia article does touch on EAGLE and its sailing history, it does not discuss specific capabilities. I plan to add a few paragraphs covering how the ship conducts a wear and tack (movement thru the winds), the sail configuration (ex. the moveable yards for the royal, topgallant, and upper sails on the fore and main), and EAGLE seamanship (which is now in its 4th edition and has become a handbook for sailors on many other tall ships.

History:

There are some key facets of EAGLE’s history that should be expanded upon in the Wikipedia article. While there are three paragraphs discussing the ship as a part of the German navy, this could be expanded to include a paragraph on the HORST WESSEL’s training mission and also more information regarding the transition from the German fleet to the Coast Guard.

There are also some key historical events EAGLE in which has taken part. The OPSAIL events should all be further delineated. Some factual inaccuracies, such as the current article naming the November-152 boot camp in 1998 as the only enlisted group to ever train onboard, need to be corrected. Further information on the current four year refit and the 1967 collision in Baltimore harbor need to be added. A list of previous voyages and Captains (many of whom went on to flag rank, including ADM Papp, the 24^th Commandant) may also provide further information at the end of the article.

I also plan to use a variety of publically available Coast Guard photographs to supplement the article.

Sources:

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, the current sourcing in the Wikipedia article is inadequate. I intend to use a variety of newspaper articles from the past 5 years, as well as four books about EAGLE, to ensure the article is properly sourced. These books are:

The Barque of Saviors: Eagle’s Passage from the Nazi Navy to the U.S. Coast Guard by Russell Drumm

The Skipper and the Eagle by CAPT Gordon McGowan

A Perfect Lady by Tido Holtkamp

EAGLE Seamanship by CAPT Eric Jones and LT Christopher Nolan

I have posted a note on EAGLE’s talk page regarding my proposed changes; so far only one person has commented encouraging me to proceed and ensure my work is properly sourced. I will be working in the sandbox soon!

I did review the Coast Guard’s social media policy prior to preparing this project. Please note that the views and facts I will be expressing as part of this update are mine and are not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the Commandant or of the U.S. Coast Guard.

UPDATE: The EAGLE Wikipedia page has been updated. Go check it out now.

Every now and then, I need a break from seriousness and find something light, fun, and fictional to read. I heard about The Magicians by Lev Grossman from a friend. This book came out in 2009-it’s a cross somewhere between fantasy and science fiction, but is really about ordinary people trying to grow up and find meaning in their lives.

The story follows the path of a high school student name Quentin who outshines his peers academically in every possible way, but at the same time is reclusive and a prototypical nerd. As he is preparing for college, he somehow finds himself visiting and being accepted into a school of magic (shades of Harry Potter here, but this book is definitely meant for an older crowd-though to be honest, I never read any of the Harry Potter books so I am not a great judge of these comparisons). The school even has its own magic game the students play against each other (just like Harry Potter). However, the big differences involve rather serious illicit romantic escapades, illegal drugs, and often a few gruesome (and surprising) deaths. Quentin escapes the boring and ‘meaningless’ life in the real world and pours his great brain power into becoming a magician; though he quickly finds it is not just about waving a wand, but rather takes a lot of work and study to become skilled (like anything in this world).

As Quentin moves from high school to a magical college to Antarctica (don’t ask) to New York and finally to a magical world, he keeps waiting to be happy and to find meaning. When he graduates, he finds himself adrift with his friends and no real purpose. What meaning does work have to a person who can magically alter anything and everything? What value does mundane reality provide to someone smart enough to see through it? He whittles his time away drinking and partying. When he finally happens upon an adventure and a quest to a magical land of talking animals and an all-powerful God-like ram name Umber who speaks in a deep voice (strong shades of Narnia here), he sees it almost as a sarcastic joke. Along the way, the book confronts the realities of death, growing up, moving past your parents (who obviously never understand you), and the same journey all of us must take as we move from the protective and routine life of regimented learning in high school and college to finding a job and a purpose (and a job). In short, the book shows us our reality as we all try to find meaning and make a difference in our own mundane everyday existences.

Grossman definitely understands irony-students are constantly making fun of magic, their ancient teachers, and themselves as they go about growing up. For example, the giant talking black bear seems to solely want to talk about the finer details of different types of honey (it is best when found downwind from a field of lavender). Or when the adroit band of magicians is offered the thrones of the magical land of Fillory, this magnanimous offering is explained by the locals as making “perfect political sense-we have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.” The best joke is when the group struggles with bringing firearms to the magical land (which obviously must still be a pre-industrial revolution civilization); one character refuses to allow guns, stating “Fillory is a pristine society-have you ever even watched Star Trek-this is basic Prime Directive stuff!” In the end, Quentin finds that (spoiler alert) the villain is a child who desperately does not want to grow up—almost like the book is obviously meant for adults who never grew out of the time they spent as children with Narnia, Tolkien, Shannara, and Harry Potter.

So what did I learn? As Quentin is told, there is no “secret door that will lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it. There is nothing else. It is here. And you had better decide to enjoy it or you are going to be miserable wherever you go for the rest of your life.” In other words, its important to find a way to have fun along the way.

So what was missing from this book? I’m not sure. Certain sections did drag on (though they kept me awake driving across a few states and during some rather long runs), especially when Quentin spent a semester abroad in Antarctica. There were a slew of questions left unanswered, but that is the reason they make sequels.

I definitely enjoyed this book (maybe I don’t want to grow up). Give me another few months, and I will probably go hunt down that sequel (there are now 3 books in this series) and see what happened to Quentin and if he ever found meaning and purpose. Score: 8.

The internet is supposed to unite people. In my first blog post, I wrote about how the internet makes cooperation, collaboration, and communication easier. In short, it makes forming groups and associations simple (just think of how easily you can friend someone on Facebook, twitter, linkedin, or any other social media site). This reminded me of Alexis de Tocqueville’s image (painted in Democracy in America) of a society of rugged individuals which needed little government, because as problems came into existence, groups would spontaneously form to solve them. The internet should be making these groups infinitely easier to form.

Emily Parker, in her book Now I Know Who My Comrades Are, speaks about how the internet is used, but not quite in the group-forming way, in China. Their government, the book makes clear, is afraid of groups. If someone tries to use the internet to organize a meeting of activists, that person or their website will be shut down. But there are other ways to use the internet to foment opposition. People online can use the internet to access real news instead of government approved propaganda. They can write, but need to do so in a way that won’t be so confrontational and lead the government to come after their work. People can learn about each other (their comrades) on the internet, but need to be careful and self-censor themselves online lest they go too far and anger big brother.

Rebecca Mackinnon, author of Consent of the Networked, describes this as “the paradox of the Chinese Internet: public debate and even some forms of debate are expanding…while at the same time, state controls and manipulation tactics have managed to prevent democracy movements from gaining meaningful traction.” The Chinese government use pressure and the example of some businesses and individuals to force internet companies and people to edit and tone down their own work. And when people or businesses do cross the line, they are dealt with, arrested, not allowed to do business in China, fined, and/or shut down.

The internet makes it easier for people to communicate with each other. It can unite people to accomplish a cause. Whether pursuing a lost cell phone or helping elect a new president or even diagnosing a disease remotely, the internet can bring people together. But at the same time, when big brother (a government…or a corporation watching over how people use the web at work) is watching, and there are consequences of behavior that violates policy, it suddenly gets much harder to form those groups. I find myself wondering if I would personally have the moral courage to stand up and post my thoughts online if they could possibly lead to my arrest. I guess it would depend on the strength of my beliefs and the size of the issue; but I am honestly not sure what I would do.

Interestingly, Parker’s book relates stories about life in Communist China during the Cultural Revolution, and how people turned on each other and reported each other for even minor offenses, afraid that they themselves could be turned in and punished. This reminded me of George Orwell’s 1984. China grew out of this, with an implicit contract to support the government so long as they provided rapid economic growth. But reading about how the Chinese government has successfully convinced its own population, and even massive multinationals like Microsoft and Goggle (for a limited time) to self-censor themselves made me wonder if the era of 1984 in China ended at the close of the Cultural Revolution, or if it is still taking place today.

I recently finished The Insurgents by Fred Kaplan. The title is actually a pun in itself; it covers the rise of Counter Insurgency (COIN) as a doctrine in the army over the past 25 years, and how the army had to adapt and accept COIN in order to achieve any success in Iraq and Afganistan. It follows the insurgents in the military who struggle to be heard against the prevailing wisdom of the time as they advocate for a COIN strategy.

COIN is relatively simple…instead of just fighting and killing insurgents, you also need to win the support of the population so they will turn against the insurgency you are fighting. However, it takes time, resources and troops; all of which must be focused on supporting the population, helping provide basic security, and setting up good governance (or allowing good governance to evolve into place). The book is clear that the time and resources (esp. in Afghanistan) were not always there.

Kaplan traces COIN thru the history of the military (it was around and used by the Marine Corps for a long time) and how is was shuffled aside following Vietnam. However, some officers remained rooted in COIN, esp. in the smaller wars (ie. not featuring major army on army clashes that were trained for). Officers such as LTCOL John Nagl (side note: I know Nagl personally and he was a mentor of mine) and GEN David Petraeus published on and advocated for COIN for years. Others officers used and implemented COIN strategies in the field (like LTGEN Barno in 2004-2005 in Afghanistan). Most of these times, these strategies were more effective than other practices in the field.

The biggest thing I learned from this book is that leaders must not be afraid of change and questioning their assumptions. In order to survive, succeed, and thrive today, an organization must continue to adapt and confront new realities. Eventually our forces did this and were able to find some degree of success. As leaders, we must continue look for when and were we must do this, and most importantly, not fear it.

So what was missing from this book: Why was there not a cohesive COIN effort until Petraeus took over in Iraq in 2007-2008? There was a lot of internal pushback against COIN. Many leaders did not support or believe in COIN. The book does not thoroughly explain why leaders such as Secretary Rumsfield and Gen Casey opposed COIN so strongly. Another missing element (in the effort and the book) was an explanation of where the rest of government was-COIN must both be a security effort and an effort by other parts of government (led by the Dept of State) to help the local population build the governance structures needed to take over from the COIN efforts. Yet too often the State Dept and the DOD seemed to be squabbling over personality differences and turf battles. Why did they not work together more effectively? Why was there not more pressure from above to force them to get on the same page?

Interesting reading about the history of COIN and a strong perspective on the wars of the past 15 years. However, it almost seems to glorify some COIN leaders a little too much: Kaplan rarely delves into the flaws of COIN or the leaders who support it. If so many people opposed COIN, it must have had more significant downsides than Kaplan lets on. Score: 7-an engaging history but points lost for a partial lack of objectivity and missing some key elements of COIN outside the military.

How should a government listen to and respond to its people? In America, we listen in many different ways. Government is ultimately accountable to the people in that the people elect our leaders on a routine basis and if the leaders do not listen and respond to the desires of the people, they are removed from office when they are not reelected. In addition, many states and the Federal government employ a rule making process to develop their regulations, and the process provides an opportunity for the public to comment. The media also provides a direct avenue for people to reach out to the government, through op-eds and stories covering what people want. And finally, the people can reach right out to the government, scheduling meetings, sending letters, and talking directly to officials and the bureaucracy.

Has the Internet changed this? During his 2008 campaign, President Obama was able to harness the power to the internet to reach out to and engage the electorate. He didn’t just claim to empower people and then ignore them, but rather he gave them real power thru MyBO, his social networking site. People were able to form groups, raise funds, engage with other voters, write blog posts, and more. At times they were even scored on how active they were, so that there was a direct incentive for volunteers to try and rack up a higher score in a competitive fashion. President Obama listened to the people online; when they disagreed with his Senate votes at the time, he posted explanations and showed his online following that he cared.

In 2012, President Obama added another key piece to the puzzle. In addition to empowering volunteers to pursue his goals using their own initiative, he added extreme micro-targeting. Through the use of his Narwhal software, his team could analyze a voter. The data was routinely updated and Obama camp was able to target the people likely to vote for him and work to get them to the polls. There still was an element of persuasion to convince people to vote for Obama, but there was far more of a Get-Out-The-Vote effort to get those already inclined to vote his way to the polls.

But could these impressive IT techniques and tools be translated to good governance? What would that look like? Could the President find a way to keep this group of engaged citizens involved and excited? In 2009, he set up the Organizing for America website (OFA2.0, following his Obama for America original site-now known as Organizing for Action). He tried to mobilize the people who put in the effort and supported him during the election. OFA2.0 was to provide Obama a grassroots arm to mobilize popular support for his policies and convince key elected officials to support him. However, except for some work on the 2010 Affordable Health Care Act, OFA2.0 has really not been marshalled by the President to help put his ideas into action.

The President’s team has also put in place a significantly more digital White House presence, including the We-The-People petition site. 152 petitions have received a response (including releasing the White House beer recipes and admitting that there is no evidence of extraterrestrial life), and more are being worked on. This is a good start.

But it seems like more could be done. Why hasn’t the government engaged citizens in the same way that the Obama campaign targeted and engaged voters? There probably is an issue of scale and having to treat all citizens equally and fairly. Additionally, the people tend not to speak in a unified voice (as opposed to the Obama campaign where their one message generally was ‘Elect Obama.’ This probably also involves privacy rights and issues of different government agencies (and Federal vs State vs Local levels) sharing information. It just seems that if we are able to use these tools to elect officials (and in private industry-see Facebook, Amazon, and my post on Filter Bubbles), then we could use them to find the problems in peoples’ lives and work on them. There already are things being done, like the IRS accepting online tax forms or the ability to review pending congressional legislation online. However, there is definitely still more to be done to create a more customer-friendly government that can harness the power of the internet to listen to the voices, needs, and desires of the people.