Blue sky in games campaign

This is for zugman.

edit: Due to personal health issues blogging will cease for awhile.

Let’s go on to a game called “Narrate”

Uh-uh. Nope. Too late. You can’t say that

I’m tired of all these people in or working closely with the military speaking their minds on military matters. Get a load of this guy:

The war continues to abate in Iraq. Violence is still present, but, of course, Iraq was a relatively violent place long before Coalition forces moved in. I would go so far as to say that barring any major and unexpected developments (like an Israeli air strike on Iran and the retaliations that would follow), a fair-minded person could say with reasonable certainty that the war has ended.

Hold on here. Didn’t a certain US senator already declare failure in Iraq? Wasn’t the declaration made over a year ago? Is Michael Yon even paying attention to things??

Message to Michael Yon: Once in awhile you should step away from the field where the action is actually taken place and into the far rear echelons of politics back home,  where facts and first-hand observations can’t get in the way of popular memes and biases, and if you had done so you might have been able to learn that the war has long since been over, dood. We LOST it by congressional fiat.

Also worth stating is that while the senator who declared the surge in Iraq a failure received some criticism for doing so, the pronouncement was, if anything, too late. The proper time to declare a war effort a failure should be the moment when the first American body bag is filled. That’s how you teach our enemies not to mess.

We should all be ashamed for having offended this poor man

Sudan is angered by genocide claims.

The Sudanese government has responded angrily after an international prosecutor accused President Omar al-Bashir of genocide in Darfur.

Well, Western civilization, what do you expect when you go barging in the front door of other nations’ homes haughtily telling them how to run their affairs? How would we like it if a North African nation shoved its nose into our business, picked said nose with its finger of scorn, and pointed at us the booger of blame?

What deeply worries me about the way we go on offending other nations like this is the senseless loss of trust and goodwill from those who never did anything to us. Is bickering and arguing over who committed genocide against who really the way to move forward?

A certain wise man once said, “Judge not that ye be not judged” — a clear call for an end to all punishment, justice, and even the very recognition that any action taken by any other person can ever be wrong. No one embraced his wisdom then and no one embraces it today. This country is brimming with self-righteous snoots who claim to follow the advice of that wise man, but who, were I to plant a garden sickle in their backs as they sleep, burn their houses down and murder their families, would accuse me of all manner of wickedness. If that isn’t hypocrisy then what is?

All I really needed to know I learned from playing Starcraft

Michael Shermer wrote that “ever since Skeptic magazine published an investigative article on the 9/11 ‘Truth Movement’ and analyzed their claims, which were found wanting, I have been hounded by the so-called 9/11 ‘truthers’ because I am the editor of the magazine and therefore am suppose to be a ’skeptic’ of the official explanation for 9/11.” Thereafter, it became difficult for Shermer to give a lecture anywhere on any subject without a truther present in the audience to stand up and press him with uncomfortable questions. When he reported this at his website, truthers emerged from the four corners of the Internet to argue in the skeptics’ home court.

Truthers come out forcefully in large numbers in the least expected places, as you can witness for yourself by browsing the comments on any Youtube video remotely related to the topic. Their efforts have not been entirely unsuccessful. A poll indicated that over a third of Americans believe it likely that the government either allowed to happen or carried out themselves the attacks of 9/11. (Naturally, the number goes up when you leave the States; a majority in India do not believe that al Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Bin laden is very furious about this)

I admire the tactics of truthers. They are the same tactics which countless hours playing the Starcraft Zerg–hours which I would not trade for all the ice cream in the world–have burned into my warfaring soul.

What the Truth Movement, the Zerg race, the ancient Persians, Carl von Clausewitz, the commanders on both sides of the Battle of Stalingrad, and Eric Shinseki have all understood is that victory on the battlefield–as well as truth and right–is decided not by quality but by quantity of attack. The greater the number of troops, the more annoying, the faster you can produce them, the better. Also, I believe Clausewitz included in his famous treatise a chapter on the importance of spawning enough Overlords <- Yes, do click that.