Fun Stuff

The three most popular books at Guantanamo's library for detainees reportedly are:

1. The Harry Potter novels
2. Miguel Cervantes's Don Quixote
3. Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father

I don't know what this means.

Rickydavid/Flickr

Do I want to know what this is all about? I mean, I know it's a video game -- but why does Leeroy need some eggs? I don't think I really want someone to explain to me, bitte, what are "devout shoulders?"

That said, I like this because at least at the beginning it feels like every platoon leader I have ever heard in a serious situation. It all reminds me of something that the young British counterinsurgency expert (and Megan Fox-lookalike) Clare Holdenbild once said to me ...

Readers of this blog know I am a big fan of reading lists. Here is a good one on counterinsurgency from Eliot Cohen, one of the smartest people I've ever met, and author of Supreme Command, among other books.

n0wak/Flickr

Remember when I sent up a flare asking for help in understanding physicist Sean Gourley's claim that he has found a mathematical pattern of violence in different wars?

We seem to have a better class of reader than even I thought. Professor Gourley himself responds with this note, which I am publishing with his permission:

With this new approach we can do several important things that were not possible before. We can understand the underlying structure of an insurgency i.e. how an insurgency 'decides' to distribute its forces (weapons, people, money etc). Further, we can explain why this kind of insurgent structure emerges in multiple different conflict zones around the world. We can estimate the number of autonomous insurgent groups operating within a theatre of war. We can monitor and track a conflict through time to see how either sides strategies are affecting the state of the war. Finally we can compare the mathematical patterns of current ongoing wars with past wars to estimate how close they are to ending."

This is a pretty sweeping set of assertions. I still don't see it. But that may be my fault. Smart, statistically-comfortable readers: Do you see support for these claims?

whiteafrican/Flickr

Old school players to new school fools: Jay-Z says, "I saw a Wendy's commercial and they're using Auto-Tune. They're joking on it. It's like, OK, enough of that ... It was a trend, it was cool in the beginning. Some people made great music with it, now it's time to move on."

You hear that sound, Ron Browz, T-Pain, Kanye and L'il Wayne?

Photo via Flickr user SqueakyMarmot

Commentators and experts from around the country have called for the extermination of Auto-Tune, as if the creative path of popular music is so easy to deter, its favored technologies so simple to contain. One Beltway journalist and blogger now contends that our organization, the Center for a New American Security, should put our brainpower to the critical national challenge of sculpting just such a plan, as if Auto-Tune is the new Soviet Union, and as if we have found ourselves in a cultural Cold War.

This suggestion is based on a misunderstanding of the pragmatic, reasoned approach CNAS brings to all of its work. While we do not take institutional positions, I can affirm after a healthy debate that many of my colleagues agree that while the over-use of Auto-Tune should be walked back to a status of minimal but strategic, calculated use, a sweeping call for its death represents just the kind of un-nuanced policy which we attempt in all our work to counterbalance.  Do we call for the mass destruction of guitars because of Daughtry? No, we don't. Certainly Jamie Foxx et al.'s performance at this week's BET Awards argues for a measured approach to this issue."

Auto-Tune doesn't kill music, people kill music.

Marcelo Vejar G./Flickr

OK, here's a chance for all of youse who was complaining that I didn't give a talk in your town when I was blimblamming around the country for the release of the hardcover edition of The Gamble. I seem to remember bellyaching from Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta, among other cities. (Frankly when on book tour I tend to avoid towns where the Braves have been based. I mean, it would be a bit like touring Philadelphia, Kansas City and Oakland.)

There's a maximum of eight cities on this tour, which will be in February and March of next year, so northern skiing and southern beach venues are preferred. Plus I am a huge fan of Portland, Oregon. And Moab, Utah. If you want your happening town (or academic institution) to be on the tour, just find a venue willing to pay my way and let my slave-driving publisher know at: ppresspublicity@us.penguingroup.com

Shane Huang/Flickr

I am in the Shenandoah Valley on staff ride for the next two days, so may not blog much.

More to come on Jackson in the Valley, skeptical Ewell on his flank, and such. I also will file an alert if I see Carla Bruni skinny-dipping. 

vjflicks/flickr