Veteran AF
Veteran of four wars, four enlistments, four branches: Air Force, Army, Army Reserve, Army National Guard. I am both an AF (Air Force) veteran and as Veteran AF (As Fuck)
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Bilingual Books and the Challenge of Lifelong Learning
Thursday, January 9, 2025
Israel Alone by Bernard-Henri Levy--The World Changed The Month It Was Published
On September 10 of the year just passed Bernard-Henri Levy published his new book Israel Alone. I have read several of Levy's books since returning to Judaism in 2017, so I read this one eagerly.
Levy made clear that on campuses in Europe and America, Jew haters were attacking Jews with impunity. Western leaders kept saying there must be a cease fire no matter how many Jews are raped or murdered. Israel did seem quite alone and embattled. Hezbollah attacked from the north. Iran had attacked with a barrage of missiles. The Houthis were firing ballistic missiles from Yemen. Hamas continued to hide in hospitals and use Gazans as human shields.
Israel looked quite alone.
As I read the book, I realized the deep lament at the center of this brief book had receded somewhat. A week after the book was published, Israel attacked Hezbollah killing and maiming thousands of its tactical leaders in the Pager Attack. Terrorists taking a huge dose of their own medicine.
Before the month ended Hassan Nasrallah and most of the top leaders of Hezbollah were dead in an air strike that showed how deeply Israel had penetrated the terrorist organization. Then Israel smashed the Hezbollah rocket launchers and attack tunnels on its border.
Israel attacked Iran and took out all of Irans air defenses. Israel or any other of Iran's enemies with an air force could attack at will. A month later, pro-Russian/Iranian Syria collapsed. The Russians are gone. The Iranian supply route to Lebanon is gone.
The Trump administration takes office with Trump threatening there will be "all Hell to pay" if Hamas does not release all of the hostages from the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Among the predictions of chaos after January 20, many believe Trump will begin mass deportations. He may. But several of Trump's cabinet picks have plans to revoke the visas of students who are supporting Hamas and other terrorist groups. The first deportations may be terrorist supporters on visas. There will be nomass protest of deporting those who cheer Hamas and other terrorists.
Israel is still largely alone, but since Levy's book was published, Israel has crushed several of its enemies and winners always have friends.
Saturday, January 4, 2025
Tribe by Sebastian Junger -- The Ancient Roots of Many Problems of the Modern World
In October, I went a conference on Tribalism and Cosmopolitanism. The first and featured speaker was Sebastian Junger, author of seven books that, in part, describe the lives of modern tribes in America including soldiers, commercial fishermen, and others who risk their lives in their work. Junger said, "The real and ancient meaning of tribe is the community that you live in, that you share resources with, that you would risk your life to defend."
Thursday, January 2, 2025
The French Roots of Sinatra's "I Did It My Way"
In November 1968, Frank Sinatra told his friend and collaborator Paul Anka that he was tired and ready to give up show business. Sinatra had asked Anka several times to write a song for him, but Anka had been intimidated. He saw himself writing teen songs. During dinner Sinatra said, "You never wrote me that song."
Friday, December 27, 2024
For the Sweep of History, Read New Books First
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, charts the history of the species Sapiens including highs like civilization and medicine and lows like all the misery that ensued when we left hunter gatherer lives to settle down and become the servants of wheat. (Originally written in Hebrew, Sapiens was translated into English with the author working on it. Harari is multi-lingual and speaks and writes in English.)
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. He says geography is the reason western culture came to dominate the world in the past half millennium, along with as the title says, guns, germs and steel.
For the Christian Scripture, I suggest David Bentley Hart. Like Alter, his notes are brilliant. He is an Orthodox theologian who has pissed off most of Christendom with his opinions expressed in many books. He has even said Hell does not exist to make sure he has enmity from every direction. I read The Gospel of John and the letters of John in Greek recently. I used Hart's translation when I was stuck. Which happened a lot.
Tuesday, December 24, 2024
The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self by Michael Easter
In the hopeful world of self-help books the reader is drawn into the possibility of changing her life for the better. We could all be thinner, more organized, better read, faster, more calm, more mindful, less wasteful and any number of personal improvements.
Much of the advice is incremental--the steps toward the goal, not the leap. Michael Easter gives the reader the steps toward the leap. The central event of the book is a month-long trek with 80-pound packs through the wilderness of northern Alaska hunting caribou.
On the way he tells us how hunger, boredom, exhaustion, cold, dirt and other forms of discomfort will make our lives happier and better. The book is full of the latest research showing how discomfort makes us stronger, smarter, tougher and happier.
It is also very well written. And if you are the kind of person who exercises a lot, fasts, endures boredom and strives to live better, the book will challenge you to do something even more extreme.
I like this book for the obvious confirmation basis that I get from it. It also added walking with a heavy pack--rucking--to things I want to do more of.
I would love to hear how you strain toward self improvement.
I wrote two other posts responding to the book. They were on boredom and dirt.
Wednesday, December 18, 2024
"Blindness" by Jose Saramago--terrifying look at society falling apart
Blindness reached out and grabbed me from the first page. A very ordinary scene of cars waiting for a traffic introduces the horror to come. The car in the middle lane doesn't move when the light turns green. The driver is blind. I was surprised and then laughed asking myself, 'Why is a blind man in the driver's seat?'
He has gone suddenly blind. A weird white blindness. He cannot see anything except bright whiteness. Pedestrians and other drivers help him from the car. One drives the afflicted man home--then steals his car. His later retribution for his theft is horrible and final. We get the feeling of the terrible events to come from the first case of blindness.
Very soon the personal tragedy becomes a wider and wider apocalypse of white blindness. The first victim and many others are sent to an abandoned mental hospital. At that point, the story becomes The Lord of the Flies with adults. Adults can try to impose order and care for each other, but when that fails, adults can be far more horrible than the worst children. In addition to theft, beatings and murder, rape adds another dimension of terror.
The novel is gripping from first page to last. I really wanted to know what would happen to the central characters as they and the world descended further and further into chaos. In Blindness Jose Saramago shows us what life would be like with the whole world going blind. There's no water. No one cleans. Civilization breaks down. Tribes are all that is left.
In the military, one of the expressions used to indicate a soldier is in very deep trouble is, "You are in a world of shit." The world of Blindness really is a "world of shit." Confined blind people shit in hallways. Walking means stepping in shit. Released from confinement blind people wander the streets of the city, and the streets and buildings become latrines.
With everyone going blind no one can deliver food--or anything else. Saramago writes vividly about this world of terror and filth.
I will stop here. Endings should be experienced. If you read dystopian books, I could not recommend this book more highly.
My favorite dystopian novel is the post-nuclear-holocaust story A Canticle for Liebowitz. Blindness is just as brilliant, just as surprising, just as terrifying.
Blindness was one of the seventeen novels published by Saramago, a total of more than thirty books including poetry essays, diaries and children's books. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998 for his work.
Bilingual Books and the Challenge of Lifelong Learning
More than a decade ago in a Paris bookstore I picked up French-Greek edition of The Gospel of John, Jean Evangile: traduit du grec, preface ...
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Tasks, Conditions and Standards is how we learn to do everything in the Army. If you are assigned to be the machine gunner in a rifle squad...
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On 10 November 2003 the crew of Chinook helicopter Yankee 2-6 made this landing on a cliff in Afghanistan. Artist Larry Selman i...
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C.S. Lewis , best known for The Chronicles of Narnia served in World War I in the British Army. He was a citizen of Northern Ireland an...