tdaxp

I'm embarking on a new project. Eventually, I hope, it will tie together with Coming Anarchy, the Wary Guerrilla Wary Student projects, as well as some other stuff. For this stage, though, I get to put my computer science experience to use by learning the hip new development platform: Ruby on Rails.

At first Ruby on Rails is -- scary. The tutorials I found online weren't much help. Happily, a fellow student who is also involved and knows more than I do suggested Agile Web Development with Rails—Second Edition. The book is amazingly good.

The book starts right-off with useful information about getting a development system up and running. Then a great "hello world" program which emphasizes Ruby on Rails usability from both the programmer's and the end-user's standpoint. The chapter ends with logical, simple tasks to aid procedural memorization.

I haven't finished the book yet (far from it), and I haven't begun on the main project either. But so far this book is an outstanding resource.

The last two chapters of the second section of John Robb's new book, Brave New War: The Next State of Terrorism and the End of Globalization, begin to seriously introduce the concepts Robb first introduced on his global guerrillas and personal weblogs. The first of these chapters, Systems Disruption, focuses on his main idea that the best way for small forces to battle states is to attack them at brittle parts of the strongest component: their infrastructure. Following that, Open Source Warfare compares a method of warfighting to the popular free and open source software movement that is behind the Firefox web browser.

"Systems Disruption" is a short chapter. The first pages recite various economic facts which are not under dispute. The parts that are questionable are not factually wrong but are open to question. The book uses the phrase "global guerrillas" again without providing a definition, though "systempunkt" is defined earlier in the chapter. Additionally, twice (pgs 103 and 110) I was struck that if these tactics is so open, obvious, and cheap, why are they not seen?

A clue can be found on page 107, where Brave New War emphasizes that global guerrillas should not aim for the destruction of the state.

Complete collapse would create total war... A complete urban or country takedown would prompt the state to launch a total war. This is a type of warfare that global guerrillas are not prepared or able to fight... By keeping the level of damage below what would be considered fatal to the state, total war is avoided

This may be the most important paragraph of the book. Global guerrillas are nuisances who can aim for nothing better. They, like thugs of all sorts, can kill and maim. But they are not as important or dandgerous are foreign states or internal insurgencies.

The next chapter, "Open Source Warfare," is full of fun ideas. I covered similar ground in my posts, "The Unix Philosophy" and "Audacity." Likewise, the concept of sematectonic ("Environmental conditions influence the behavior of all actors in the system...") appears important for SecretWar/5GW. "Open Source Warfare" is an offensive chapter that introduces these important ideas to a large audience.

This is my second initial reactions post on Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization, by John Robb. The second section is called "Global Guerrillas," and contains three chapters: "The Long Tail of Warfare Emerges," "Systems Disruption," and "Open Source Warfare."

This post focuses on the fourth chapter of the book, "The Long Tail of Warfare Emerges."

"The Long Tail of Warfare Emerges" is a split effort, containing solid counterinsurgency with a definition (I think) of "global gurreillas." The solid section covers "Paramilitaries," or what could be thought of as an Extended Systems Adminitration Force. Both loyalty militias and security contractors are discussed in this section that runs from page 86 to 89. Sadly, the section ends with one of the one-way claims that detract from Robb's work generally:

For every local or global failure of nation-states to address critical problems, corporate participants in general and PMCs in particular will continue to gain ground. It's inevitable

Note in the above quote non-national states/devolutionary possibilities are not discussed (particularly gauling for an American author, who should be readily familiar with 50 quasi-sovereign states that are not nations), and that no possibility of states gaining ground on corporate service-providers is mentioned.

Right on the heels of that quote is a discussion of "Third Generation Gangs" theory," whose quixotic use of "generation" may be of interest to 4GW and 5GW theorists.

When I first heard of the "generational gangs" concept, I wrote:

I started reading Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization, by John Robb. I've defined global guerrilllas before, a topic John Robb often blogs about, so I am interested in what he has to say.

This post is not a review of the book, but rather contains my initial thoughts on the first three chapters of the book. Chapter 1, The Superempowered Competition, presents his theory that due to technology and globalization the forces of disorder are more individually powerful than ever. Chapter 2, Disorder on the Doorstep, presents an introduction to 4GW and the generations of warfare. Chapter 3, A New Strategic Weapon, focuses on systems disruption as a key to victory.

The last few pages of Part I (particularly, 60-63) are well written. Robb presents a realistic summary of the partial victory options that remain for the United States in Iraq.

They are the highlight of the book so far

Brave New War averages something like 1 false or questionable fact per page in the early part of the book. These range from strange statements ("Unlike previous insurgencies, the one in Iraq comprises seventy-five to one hundred small, diverse, and autonomous groups of zealots, patriots and criminals alike," page 2 -- is Robb implying that all previous disorder has bene uniform?), to undefined terms (especially "global guerrillas" and "bazaar of violence" on page 15, though hopefully these will be rectified by the end of the book), to questionable assertions (consistent with what he was written before, Robb denies that al Qaeda is totalitarian and implies that al Qaeda leaders are free from the normal human impulse to centralize power that characters most previous revolutionary groups -- see page 18 for the first occurance of this).

So far, Brave New War would be better written if it refrained from claiming things were "new" when they weren't. On page 27, for example, Robb claims that "Unlike early guerrilla wars of the twentiy century, the guerrilla wars we saw in the latter half of the twentieth century were substantially harder to defeat due to a combination of superpower sponsorship and innovation in method... As we progressed into the 1980s and the cold war faded, smaller states began to adopt the use of proxies to fight their enemies as well." Of course, the analysis falls apart completely when one remembers Britain was in a long counterinsurgency against German-backed Afrikaners in South Africa, that only "ended" with the establishment of an independent South Africa, nominally loyal to the Crown, but ruled by the former insurgents.

I'm writing this in the floor of Chicago O'Hate, as I wait for my flight to be re-scheduled. Presumably, I'll be done by Part II by the time I land.

The front cover of New York Times-reporter Nicholas Wade's new book, Before the Dawn, contains a quote by E.O. Wilson: "By far the best book I have ever read on humanity's deep history." I couldn't agree more. Before the Dawn is more informative than Nature via Nurture, more readable than The Blank Slate, and proves (contra The Emperor's New Clothes) that popularizations of population genetics don't have to be deceitful and revolting.

Before the Dawn dwells on several major events in the human story: separation from chimpanzee-ancestors, the end of seperate sex hierarchies with the introduction of pair bonding, physically modern human, behaviorally modern human, and socially modern humans. From a founder population fo 150, the first behaviorally modern human beings who left Africa at the Gate of Grief would conquer three other human species (Neanderthals, Erecti, and Hobbits) and within fifty thousand years spread an African species all over the face of the world.

Every chapter in Before the Dawn is worth reading, but several stand out as some of the best in the history of scientific nonfiction: "Genetics & Genesis" outlines the author's plan of attack, "Genesis" describes mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam, "Exodus" tells of the seafaring conquest of the Coasts in the face of Erecti resistance to Australia, the second truly human continent, "Race" addresses the major family groupings of man, "Language" applies genetic technology to recovering the time and place for the first human tongue, and "Evolution" recaps the book and looks forward to the next human species.

Nick Wade is a science columnist for the New York Times, and his journalist touch is fully worked. I learned more about the Thomas Jefferson- Sally Hemmings twist than I did before, including that Sally his the half-sister of Tom's first wife. The unique haplotypes of Icelanders and Jews are discussed. and the interesting that the current races appear not to have existed 15,000 years ago give one much to chew on.

Before the Dawn is very up to date, and includes fair criticism of Evolutionary Psychology that comes from our increased understanding of genetics. When John Tooby and Leda Cosmides founded EP, it was reasonable to presuppose that substantive human evolution had ended by the late stone age. That assumption is no longer tenable. We are not modern humans with stone-aged minds. We are modern humans with modern minds.

This great book has already made a buzz. John Derbyshire of The National Review loves it, while Nature hates it.

Before the Dawn is available for $15.72 from Amazon.com, and for $19.96 from Barnes & Noble.

Michael Houellbecq's (pronounced "Wellbeck") Against the World, Against Life is a literary manifesto. Neither a literary biography nor an annotated anthology, Against the World is rather a vehicle for spreading the Lovecraftian voice in literature. Lovecraft's writing style, and not just his written thoughts, are held up as examplars for all future writers. We should be so lucky.

Some deeper words are below the fold, but to keep your attention I'll say a few words about sex and money. Or rather, Houelbecq's interpretation of Lovecraft's odd view of sex and money. Sex is never directly referenced in anything Lovecraft wrote, and has only two purposes in his universe: as a vehicle for the propagation of the human species (hardly a worth cause) or (infinitely worse) a vehicle for miscegenation. Money is known only by its absence: the declining fortunes of late ancestors which allow the narrator some measure of intellectual freedom.

Many critics of Lovecraft argue that the position of sex and wealth in Lovecraft's work are merely the author's quirks, and that Lovecraftian fiction can be written that incorporate different views. Houelbecq would disagree, and quotes Lovecraft (page 58):

"When I contemplate man, I wish to contemplate those characteristicks that elevate him to a human state, and those adornments which lend to his actions the symmetry of creative beauty. 'Tis not that I wish false pompous thoughts and motives imputed to him in the Victorian manner, but that I wish his composition justly aprais'd, with stress lay'd upon those qualities which are peculiarly his, and without the silly praise of such beastly things as he holds in common with any hog or stray goat."

If the point is unclear, a second point is given on the same page: I do not think that any realism is beautiful.

A close blog-friend of mine has been following a dream of combining new and old technologies: specifically, audio on the web and biplane flight. So he's recorded audiobooks of "The Wright Brothers on Flying," "Captain Boelcke's Field Reports," and "The Red Air Fighters: Memoirs of Manfred von Richthofen."

This post was completely unsolicited, and like before merely a shout-out to a friend. Learn more at "Flying Circus Audiobooks: Great Stories Great Adventures."

iWoz is the sort of book I would have loved ten years ago, and indeed it's the sort of material that makes for a great radio interview. If written in 1995, it would have been one of my favorite books of all time. As it is, Stephan Wozniak's autobiography is a fine partial history of the era that saw the rise of the personal computer. It belongs in the same class as High Noon (about Sun Microsystems) and The Second Coming of Steve Jobs (about the Next-Apple transition). A step below true classics like Fire in the Valley, iWoz is quite good.

iWoz is broken into several large parts. The first section focuses mostly on Wozniak's electric-logic experience, from earlier science fair experiments to an arpanet terminal that would eventually morph into the Apple I. These include early pranks and feature elements of obsession, sacrifices, humility, and geography that I would find as the basis of creativity in my series on Coming Anarchy. Woz's systematic exploration of electronic circuitry would finally come together in the Apple II, a product he is quite proud of and truly one of the grandest achievements of the 1980s.

A second, gloomer half documents Steve's inability to horizontally apply these skills to other aspects of his life. Two marriages fail and after the second he writes painfully of losing his house. Likewise, with grace and modesty Wozniak documents betrayals by Steve Jobs and poor treatment to the news media. Similarly, Wozniak documents the failures of his US Concerts to be either what he intended or profitable, and likewise his shortlived CL9 start-up firm.

In an earlier review of Robert Weisberg's Creativity: Beyond the Myth of Genius, I criticized that author for his differentiating "horizontal" and "analogical" thinking. While Weisberg's book retains many problems, this distinction is not one of them. While analogical thinking is the root of all creativity, horizontal thinking is worthless -- expertise does not "translate" from one domain to another unless analogies help bridge those domains.

So all in all, iWoz is a very enjoyable book. It's a fun guided tour of the early days of the Personal Computer, and has some valuable things to say along the way about the nature of creativity.

Recently, I had the rare fortune of having a haiku poem in my honor, written by no less a poet than a a Chicagoist. It reads:

tdaxp
learned and dense yet cryptic
perfect for haiku

In honor of such an gift, below are short reviews of books I read during the recent break (in haiku form!). Enjoy!

"Kingdom of Make Believe," by Dean Barrett.

I was reading Hannibal Rising today when I realized that Hannibal Lecter, film's most famous cannibal, is a Wary Guerrilla.

Wary Guerrillas are altruistic super-punishers. They accept absolute losses in order to avenge perceived injustices. They believe that society should speak in one voice and follow an eternal ethical code.

Hannibal Lecter is a particularly artistic wary guerrilla. Indeed, his orientation isn't so much societal or political as it is aesthetic. Hannibal reacts strongly to violations of decorum and etiquette, often eating those he fiends bestial. While we often talk of the aestheticization of violence, Hannibal applies violence in the interests of a true, universal, and eternal aesthetic.

Interesting, no?