Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Article from Tactics about Iraq--from my Day Job

If you want to read it, send me an email and I will send a copy. ngussman@gmail.com 

Ran Half Marathon Sunday

On Sunday I ran the ING Philadelphia Half Marathon.  It was great.  I have never run in such a big event. More than 19,000 runners started the 13.1 mile race.  They filled the Ben Franklin Parkway lining up for the start.  I started in group 20 out of 22 groups.  There were roughly 900 runners in each group so I started with 18,000 runners in front of me and about one thousand behind me.

We ran from the the parkway through Center City to the Liberty Bell then looped back to the parkway past Chinatown and the Convention Center.  We then ran down Kelley Drive to the city line, crossed the bridge and ran back on West River Drive, finishing in front of the "Rocky" steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

I ran with my friend and former editor Kristine Chin.  She brought her family to the race, so we had a four-person cheering section at the start, 5-mile mark and the finish.  This year and last year, Kristine and her husband Rick rode the RAGBRAI on a tandem.  Kristine did the 400-mile+ ride across Iowa without training.  She did train a little--riding about 100 miles (total) in the months before the ride each year.  So she convinced me I could do a half-marathon with minimal training.

She was right.  I finished!!!!  Not fast, 2 hours 23 minutes, 33 seconds.  But I moved up from 18,000th at the start to 11,208th at the finish.  And I improved by 45 minutes over my time doing the half-marathon on Tallil in Iraq last year (3:08).  It was so much fun to run in a crowd with thousands of people.  I was in lot of pain on Sunday and Monday, but I hope to do another one this year.


Monday, September 13, 2010

Echo Company Back to Fueling

On Saturday of this weekend's drill, while the country remembered 9-11, Echo Company was training for the next mission.  The Echo fuelers set a a fueling point on Medina Ridge at Fort Indiantown Gap.  Fox Company set up communications for the operation.  Three Blackhawks came in for fuel just after lunch.  I was waiting for a ride to the military-vehicles-only training area and missed the Blackhawks.

I did have a chance to watch a pair of Chinooks fly in from the east and head southwest into the sun after practicing flying into the refuel point.  They did not refuel for reasons they never tell the guy with the camera.  But it was fun to get another chance to get near the rotor blast of a Chinook and get pictures of the big birds flying off into the sun.



Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Milestone in Context

Today this blog passed 100,000 page views since June of 2008 when I started keeping track.  It's a big milestone for a small subject, what it's like to go back in the Army when you are older than dirt.  Just to put in context, I checked the traffic on one of my favorite blogs, pharyngula.  This very entertaining blog by PZ Myers has had 88 million page views in the last several years.  I suppose Justin Bieber has 88 million page views on a good day.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Citizen Soldiers are not Entirely Civilians

I got a google alert on Sunday that my battalion commander was in a picture posted on the Penn Live blog, the on-line section of the Harrisburg Patriot-News.  When I went to the page all of the pictures were of the 2-104th homecoming--both soldiers and families.  Since the eight images pictured soldiers in our unit, I called the current battalion commander, the former battalion commander, my company commander (all of whom were in photos) and the battalion Command Sergeant Major.

If a civilian communications manager calls a civilian executive during a holiday weekend, that executive will hope the news is good and be ready for something bad, but will call back because his or her phone/blackberry is always on.  None of my leaders called back until this morning.  My current battalion commander, Maj. Joel Allmandinger, said he saw the photos.  Since it was good news, no reason to call during the weekend.

Since I am the kind of workaholic who brings his laptop and cell phone on EVERY vacation or day off, I admire people who really shut off their cell phones/laptops etc and actually go on vacation.  My disconnected time is on the bike.  If I don't hear from the others by this weekend, I will try to call them again on Friday.

I admire them, but won't emulate them.  I was asking for my cell phone in the hospital after I broke my neck.  It would take some kind of psychic surgery to get me away from digital communications for more than a day.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Digital Barbarism

After my latest on-line argument earlier this week, I decided to see what my favorite living writer, Mark Helprin.  His book Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto paints a beautiful picture of all that was marvelous without digital communications.  Helprin is a writer of tall tales.  His main characters are marvelous man and women who perform unbelievable feats--an old man who walk effortlessly on mountain trails, an out-of-shape young man who goes from fat boy to climbing alpine ice cliffs in a year.

Helprin says digital communication needs rules.  He is right, but it does make me wonder how that can happen.  I never make anonymous comments, but what does that mean in a world where many people do?  Facebook is somewhat better because you deal with people you know personally--unless you have "friended" strangers.  If you are interested in the topic, Helprin entertains, not just complains.

Reading this book reminded me that many of my favorite writers are political Conservatives--CS Lewis, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Helprin are soldiers and men who want to preserve high culture: literature, the arts and everything that makes life worth living.

Here is Helprin on the 2008 election:


What a kerfuffle! Half a dozen talk-radio hosts whose major talent is that, like hairdressers, they can talk all day long to one client after another as they snip, have decided that the presumptive Republican nominee does not hew sufficiently close to their gospel.
As anyone who has listened to them knows, the depth of their thought is truly Oprah-like. And if a great institution of the left can weigh-in as it does in the choice of a nominee, why not its fraternal twins on the right? It doesn't matter that Mitt Romney, suddenly their Reagan, became a conservative in a flash of light sometime last year, or that their other champion, a populist theocrat, is in many ways as conservative as Vladimir Lenin. The task is to stop the devil McCain.
As a mere print person whose words are not electrified and shot through walls, automobiles, pine trees, and brains, I realize that what I write in the bloody ink of a dying industry may be irrelevant. But from my antiquated perspective, something is very wrong.
Ostracism following tests of "right thinking" is a specialty of the left. Not that it doesn't exist on the right, blooming with great malice especially on the radio. But in light of their prospects, conservatives have no room for it. For by their neglectful forfeit they have lost the battles of culture and education, and to remain other than an occult force they must express their beliefs through politics, from which, after November, they may be for a time excluded.
Why? To begin with, American columns should have cut through Baghdad after three days and exited three weeks later, leaving Saddam dead and a pliant Iraqi strongman to keep the country harmless or suffer the same quick take-down. Rather than being broken on the wheel of irreconcilable Muslim factions, a supple and intact American power would have shattered Arab elation following Sept. 11, and then by threatening their rule been able to discipline the various police states of the region into eliminating their terrorists. Far more efficient that way, without six and more murderous and unavailing years in which neither a single democracy has appeared nor will one. The surge is merely coincident with a change in Sunni strategy. Instead of watching the U.S. and Iran arm the Shiites for a major sectarian war, the Sunni choose to avail themselves of American arms while simultaneously removing the lunatic jihadists nipping at their heels.
The Democrats' advantage in 2008 is that the costs of the war in Iraq have been highly disproportionate to its effects, not least in the decline of the American military, when it could have been otherwise. Conservatism has been dehorsed, because though conservatives rightly seek victory, it has not appeared except in the minds of those suffering from cognitive dissonance.
This and the economy threaten to throw the conservative enterprise back to where it was before Ronald Reagan or even William F. Buckley. Along comes John McCain, who has an 80% positive rating from the American Conservative Union but who as a truly independent soul does not fit, at the margins, some of the transient notions of what makes a conservative. Because of his independence and flexibility, he is the only Republican candidate who has a chance of winning, and thus preserving the core principles of conservatism, in relation to which he is unimpeachable. They are national security (in particular the strength of the military after Iraq and vis-à-vis China and a resurgent Russia), Constitutionalism (as in individual vs. collective rights), and the economy (free markets vs. government industrial policy).
One can agree or disagree with his peripheral positions, but political orthodoxy is political death. If those who are in a hissy fit about Sen. McCain would rather have Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, they will get Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton -- how delightful to go to jail for building your house on land once visited by an exotic moth -- and they will wake up to a great regret, as if in their drunkenness they had taken Shrek to bed.
But, guess what? Even if, as the country veers left, living conservatives gnash their teeth and dead ones spin in their graves, a small class of conservatives will benefit. And who might they be? They might be those whose influence and coffers swell on discontent, and who find attacking a president easier and more sensational than the dreary business of defending one. They rose during the Clinton years. Perhaps they are nostalgic. It isn't worth it, however, for the rest of us.
So, rather than playing recklessly with electoral politics by sabotaging their own party ostensibly for its impurity but equally for the sake of their self-indulgent pique, each of these compulsive talkers might be a tad less self-righteous, look to the long run, discipline himself, suck it up, and be a man. And that would apply equally as well to the gorgeous Laura Ingraham and the relentlessly crocodilian Ann Coulter.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Transformed in a Moment

One morning in Iraq, I left battalion headquarters to ride across the base and go to a meeting with the Command Sergeant Major of the Garrison.  We were meeting about the 9/11 Commemoration Ceremony.  We had much of the program in place, but we needed a chaplain for the invocation.  When I told the commander's assistant where I was going, two or three people in the office right away said, "Sergeant Major F*&K This!"  And smiled.  The garrison CSM had a reputation for swearing that was noticeable in an Army unit in Iraq.  I had not heard a sentence from him without an F-bomb.

The chaplain everyone assumed would give the invocation had just been transferred to the north.  Chaplain Valentine, the post Catholic chaplain, taught philosophy at Fordham University in New York City.  After 9/11 he decided to volunteer for the chaplaincy.  He was on his third tour.  From our base, he rode convoys and flew to every outpost in the south of Iraq.  The north was short of chaplains, so he went off to minister at the small outposts north of Baghdad.

My pick for the invocation was Chaplain Eugen Henke of the Wisconson National Guard.  He is an inspiring speaker and left his post as top chaplain in the state to volunteer for deployment.  

I knew as Chaplain Henke and I walked toward the CSM's office that the meeting would go well, but I was a little uncomfortable at the prospect of talking about a prayer sitting between a chaplain and the CSM.  I could hear the CSM talking as we neared his office.  "Get this F--ing request to headquarters. . ."

When we walked into the office, I introduced the two men.  We sat down and talked about the ceremony, the invocation and the flow of the event.  We spoke for almost 15 minutes.  Not ONE use of the F-bomb.  It was an incredible performance.  In fact, no one believed me when I got back to our headquarters.

As I walked down the hallway with Chaplain Henke after the meeting I made small talk, but in my head I kept thinking "Un-f*&king-believeable!!!!"

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Surgery Went Well for My Oldest Daughter Lauren

Good News from the hospital.  Plates and screws will fix the compound open fracture and dislocation of her left index finger.  Lauren called me an hour after the surgery, groggy but in good spirits.  Her mom sent me a text right after the surgery to say the procedure went well.  Lauren should get most of the range of motion back in her finger.

Her big concern was whether she could play this season.  She is a senior so it's her last year playing college soccer.  She thinks if the recovery goes well she will be able to play at the end of the season.  She was doing some aerobic training during the three days she was waiting for the surgery and plans to practice as much as possible as she recovers (without using her left hand of course).

She asked the doctor if she could work out while she waited for the surgery.  The doctor said, "Yes Miss Type A. . ." and told her the exercises she was allowed to do.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Two Great Saves Become a Broken and Dislocated Finger in Pre-Season


Three days ago my oldest daughter Lauren made a spectacular save in a pre-season game.  She is a senior and plays goalkeeper for Juniata College.  She made the diving save with her left hand hitting the ball away just before she hit the ground, left hand first.  Lauren felt  a momentary sharp pain in the first finger of her left hand.  Her training overrode her feelings.  She snapped to her feet knowing that a loose ball of the net meant another shot.  She made another save.

When the ball was clear of the goal she yelled to the coach that her first finger was out of her glove.  She took the glove off then yelled to the coach that she needed a substitute.  Part of the first bone of her first finger was sticking through the skin.  At that point the game stopped and she walked off the field to get ice, ibuprofen and a ride to the hospital.

Lauren called me on the way to the hospital telling me what happened.  She was clearly on the edge of tears, but being brave.  she said she hoped for pins instead of plates and screws because she could play sooner.  It turned out she needs plates and screws and will have the surgery on Tuesday.  Later that evening after she had the X-rays she said, "It's two breaks.  My broken bone count is Seven."

I am very proud of her.  If there is any way she can play at the end of the season, I am sure she will.

The drawbacks of Army life and having a family are obvious, but on the other side of the ledger, my kids grew up (and are growing up) with Army stories as part of their lives.  They all lived with my deployment last year.  They want to be brave like their Dad and like all the soldiers I tell them about. CS Lewis said what you pretend to be, you will eventually become.

Lewis is right.

Friday, August 27, 2010

K-Oz Gets a Home!!

While i was in Boston on a business trip, Annalisa found a dog at the Humane League.  The newest member of our family is 6-year-old K-Oz (My wife studies Chaos aka Dynamical Systems in math).  He is a very sweet tempered German Shepherd.
K-Oz is helping Jacari wash his face!!!
















Nigel with K-Oz.  K-Oz is happy but needs a nap.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

From My Day Job--Book Review Published on booksandculture.com


My friend John Wilson just posted this review on his Web site at www.booksandculture.com.  Good book.  Congratulations to John on the 15th anniversary of his magazine:  Books and Culture.


The following article is located at: http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/webexclusives/2010/august/disappearingspoon.html

The Disappearing Spoon

Tales of chemistry, from the heroic to the absurd.
If you have never balanced a chemical equation, if you think chemical bonds are long-term investments in a maker of turpentine or Teflon®, then you may have missed the flurry of books based on the periodic table published in the last several years. You could be excused for thinking Sam Kean has chosen an arcane subject—the map of the chemical elements—for his 400-page book.
The title and cover art are suitably retro. In fact, the old-style title and subtitle—The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements—have almost as many letters (106) as the periodic table has named elements (112 and counting).
For those of us inside the world of chemistry, the first reaction to Kean's book (if you'll pardon the pun) is "another one?" But this young, gifted storyteller has written a book that shares only a chemical icon with other recent volumes on this theme. Kean presents the stories of the elements in all their human drama. The result is a delightful book of interwoven tales that will give even the most highly trained chemist some of the real breadth, history, and drama of the "Central Science." It is also a book that can be read on Southwest Flight 469 from Las Vegas to Baltimore to help pass five hours in an aluminum (Element 13) cylinder with 141 other carbon-based (Element 6) life forms.
Kean weaves together the lives and times of notable savants and scoundrels of chemistry to tell the stories of elements. Chapter 8 opens with fifteen scientists on the cover of Time magazine—the "Men of the Year" for 1960. In the first four decades of the 20th century, Americans earned 20 Nobel prizes in science. In the 1940s and '50s, more than twice that number, 42, earned the coveted prize in half the time.
Then Kean dives into the search for Technetium, the 43rd element and the most difficult to discover of the 92 elements that exist outside nuclear reactors. In the decade before World War II, a couple who were German scientists and Nazi sympathizers, Walter and Ida Noddack, claimed to have discovered Element 43 but were proved wrong. Others tried and failed. Then Emilio Segre, an Italian Jew who escaped the Holocaust by emigrating to America, pinned down the elusive element. Two decades later Segre was on the cover of Time.
After lauding Segre and recounting some of the details of his escape from the fate of Jews under Mussolini, Kean takes Segre down a peg. Explaining how the impetuous chemist missed discovering another element, Kean ties that mistake to the great blunder that led the great American chemist Linus Pauling to miss the structure of DNA. Pauling went on to become the only recipient of two individual Nobel prizes—for Chemistry and Peace—but James Watson and Francis Crick beat Pauling to the discovery of the structure of DNA. In a delightful (and disgusting) aside, Kean says DNA was first discovered almost a century earlier, in 1869, by a Swiss chemist who "poured alcohol and the stomach juice of pigs onto pus-soaked bandages until only a sticky, goopy grayish substance remained." The goop leads to stories about Phosphorus (Element 15) and on through the periodic table. Writing about Pauling, Kean says:
He was the Leonardo of chemistry—the one who, as Leonardo did drawing humans, got the anatomical details right for the first time. And since chemistry is basically the study of the forming and breaking of bonds, Pauling single-handedly modernized the sleepy field. He absolutely deserved one of the greatest scientific compliments ever paid, when a colleague said Pauling proved "that chemistry could be understood rather than being memorized" (emphasis added).
Kean merits the same compliment. The Disappearing Spoon shows that chemistry can be understood in all its rich history of competition, discovery, achievement, and tragedy. In an ideal world where science was central to high school and college learning for all students, Kean's book would be required reading before all the dreary daily details create a lasting, dull impression of chemistry.
And if this delightful book leaves you wanting to know more about how the periodic table works, pick up a copy of The Periodic Kingdom by Peter Atkins. The two books complement each other very well.
Neil Gussman is communications manager at the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Party at Work--September 30 Simulcast of Ig Nobel Prizes at CHF

I had lunch in near Harvard Square today at Rafiki Bistro with Marc Abrahams, creator and host of the annual Ig Nobel Prizes.  Great hamburger.  And a lot of fun talking to Marc about life in Iraq, and back home.  But the real subject of our lunch conversation was the 20th Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony on September 30 which will be simulcast at Chemical Heritage Foundation where I work.  We are hoping to have a big crowd and several special guests in Philadelphia.

Tickets are almost sold out for the 1200 seats of Harvard's Sanders Theater, where the Ig ceremony is held every year, so Philadelphia may be the best place to eccentric published science get the recognition it deserves.

After leaving Harvard Square, I got stuck in traffic jams on Mass. Ave., Mystic Parkway, and five miles of Route 93 including the Big Dig.  In the rain.  It's nice to be home.

Numbers Update

Early this morning my blog got visit number 75,000.

A few hours later, somewhere in Medford, Mass., I went over 5,000 miles on my bike for the year.
I rode those miles and the last 10 miles of this morning's 30-mile ride in cold rain.  The weather has been bad in Boston for this whole trip.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Looking Up--My View of Sling Load Training

Six huge rotor blades whipped the humid August air, lifting and holding the Chinook helicopter just a few feet off the ground.  Inside the cargo-carrying giant, the pilots waited for the signal to move forward. 

Fifty feet in front of the hovering helicopter sat a Humvee with thick cables attached to its frame at the front and rear.  A soldier crouched on top of the Humvee at either end, holding a four-foot long metal rod with a circular eyelet at the end—looking like the loop end of a huge sewing needle.  The eye is made to fit hooks attached to the belly of Chinook helicopters.

With a thumbs up signal from the flight engineer working with the ground teams, the Chinook tips its plexiglass nose slightly down and rose to 20 feet of altitude as it flew toward the Humvee.  As the big bird approached, the soldiers holding the big cabled hooks begin to get blown around by the front rotor.  A flight engineer, hanging his head and shoulders out of the “Hell Hole” in the belly of the Chinook between the cargo hooks, guides the aircraft slowly down to a hover six feet above the Humvee.

Like rodeo cowboys trying to lasso a longhorn in a hurricane, the soldiers on the Humvee stood up in the swirling air under the Chinook and swung their metal “lassos” toward the hooks on the belly of the Chinook.  When the hook set, the ground crew jumped down from the Humvee and ran 100 meters away through the full Chinook wind blast. As they ran, the pilots slowly lifted the aircraft until the cables are stretched tight.  When the flight engineer signaled that the load was set, the Chinook flew up and away with the 3-ton Humvee swinging gently beneath. 

At that point, the Humvee circled the airfield underneath the Chinook, or the pilots simply went up 50 feet then lowered their cargo back to the ground.  The up and down flight is known among air crews as an elevator drill.  As soon as the cables were slack underneath the Chinook, the crew released the electric hooks.  The cables dropped to the ground as the Chinook flew away.  The air blast from the rotors is so loud that the hooks and cables fall without a sound.

Depending on the preference of the aircrew, the pilots made a slow circle back to their hover point, or they slid the 16-ton aircraft sideways 20 feet above the ground and flew backward before spinning the olive-drab behemoth in its own length, like a Smart car making a u-turn on a narrow street, making it look like some a mythic creature let loose in the middle of Pennsylvania.

The air crews and ground instructors for the all-day exercise were from Bravo Company, 2-104th General Support Aviation Battalion which returned from a one-year deployment to Iraq in January of 2010.  They trained more than 100 soldiers from 2-28th Combat (Heavy) Support Battalion.

On Vacation

For the past week I was on vacation in Utah with my family.  I have a lot more pictures to post from the sling load.  But in the meantime, I have 1,000 pictures on a public FLICKR page here.

I plan to transfer most of the photos from Iraq to this page eventually.

Today through Wednesday I am at a chemistry conference in Boston.  It is raining and will be raining through Wednesday.  I rode in the rain yesterday to see my best friend from High School, but will be in meetings all day today.

I'll try to post more pictures in the next few days.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Two of My Favorite People Get Promoted

At first formation on Saturday morning two of the best soldiers in Echo Company got promoted.  Sgt. Jeremy Houck got promoted to Staff Sgt. and Spc. Daniel Lake to Sgt.  In Iraq, Houck was one of leaders on the team that re-built and rewired many buildings all over Tallil Ali Air Base.  We were sent at the last minute to a base that was not ready for a Combat Aviation Brigade and Houck helped to change that--in a big hurry.  Lake is a smart experienced mechanic who spent a very long year doing whatever was required on maintenance teams. He had a sergeant's responsibilities during most of the tour.  His promotion was slowed by several paperwork hassles and long overdue.

Because they are in Echo Company, the ceremony ended with a splash!!!

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Chinook Sling Load Training

Today I got a call at 11 am from our Command Sgt. Maj. saying I needed to get to the south side of the airstrip as soon as possible.  Our Bravo Company set up sling load training for the 2-28th Brigade Support Battalion, the soldiers who support the 55th (Heavy) Combat Brigade.

Sling loads are anything that can be carried underneath a Chinook helicopter by hooking heavy cables and lifting.  In the morning, it was a Humvee.  In the afternoon pallets so large they could not fit inside the Chinook.


Thursday, August 12, 2010

Restrepo

Yesterday I watched Restrepo, the movie about the worst corner of the war in Afghanistan.

Here's the trailer:


Both the movie and the book War both by Sebastian Junger, are about a year in Afghanistan with an infantry company assigned to the Korengal Valley.  Although based on the same year, the book and movie are very different, even focusing on different soldiers.

The movie is a documentary, but faster.  It doesn't explain, but shows what life is like.  And the soldiers on camera are more candid than I ever would have expected.  The commander of the unit busts on his predecessor so much I hope those two are never assigned to the same unit in the future.

I watch so few movies--this is my first in 2010--that I can't compare Restrepo to other films.  But I can tell you that I find many war movies silly or funny or both.  I wasn't laughing during Restrepo.  I was leaned forward in my theater seat and stayed all the way through the final credits.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

More from Jim Dao, NY Times about Afghanistan

Jim Dao of the NY Times is following a combat unit on their entire deployment to Afghanistan from pre-deployment through the getting back home.  Here's the latest installment.

There's some funny stuff about all the things that go wrong with a  new unit on its first mission.  It's front-page of the print edition today for those who read the old fashioned way.

Not So Supreme: A Conference about the Constitution, the Courts and Justice

Hannah Arendt At the end of the first week in March, I went to a conference at Bard College titled: Between Power and Authority: Arendt on t...