Sarah Paine is a professor of History and Grand Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College. This excellent lecture sheds a lot of light on strategy in the Pacific in WW2, and contains great illustrations of how worldview affects decision making and strategy. Recommended. This one’s next: See also: One Hundred Million Souls for the… Read More »| Driverless Crocodile
Other things are rarely equal. All things never are. What the ocean does: swell direction and height, wave interval, secondary swell, wind strength, tide (high or low, spring or neap), dawn or dusk, rain or shine, bake or freeze. The contours of the seabed and the beach: where the reef begins, where the sand’s shifted,… Read More »| Driverless Crocodile
Worldview: Sarah Paine on Japanese culture and strategy in World War 2| Driverless Crocodile
Arendt wrote the prologue to The Human Condition not long after the successful launch of Sputnik raised the first realistic prospect of humanity taking its first steps off-planet, and in the shadow of threatening and perplexing developments in atomic and quantum physics (see her comments on the crisis of language in the sciences). It’s a… Read More »Hannah Arendt on science, language, politics and our future machine overlords The post Hannah Arendt on science, language, politics and our...| Driverless Crocodile
It would be no surprise to me if it came as no surprise to you that running a leaf blower for thirty minutes produces far less pollution than driving a Ford Raptor from Texas to Alaska. Or that an hour’s use of a leaf blower emits nowhere near as much carbon as driving a Toyota… Read More »Fact check: Comparing Leaf Blower Carbon Emissions with Pollution from Cars The post Fact check: Comparing Leaf Blower Carbon Emissions with Pollution from Cars appeared first on Driverless Crocodile.| Driverless Crocodile
See also: GK Chesterton on HG Wells and the function of an open mindFools’ Money (2): Counter ArgumentChesterton’s Fence (at Farnham Street)| Driverless Crocodile
Disclaimer: I’m an intermediate surfer. This post is for people a step or two behind me, so your mileage may vary – let me know what I’ve missed in the comments. I’m convinced that most surf coaching videos and websites spend way too much time talking about the pop up* and way too little time… Read More »Surfing: Why does it help to arch your back when paddling? (it isn’t for leverage) – Surf Lessons #8 The post Surfing: Why does it help to arch your back when paddling? (it is...| Driverless Crocodile
Here’s Stephenson, from his Substack: Speaking of the effects of technology on individuals and society as a whole, Marshall McLuhan wrote that every augmentation is also an amputation. I first heard that quote twenty years ago from a computer scientist at Stanford who was addressing a room full of colleagues—all highly educated, technically proficient, motivated… Read More »Neal Stephenson on augmentation as amputation The post Neal Stephenson on augmentation as amputation appeared fi...| Driverless Crocodile
Newbigin was a sharp but affectionate observer of Western culture, a highly educated insider with an extra layer of perspective that came from almost 40 years lived in India from 1936 to 1974. Soviet leaders regarded science simply as a necessary tool for the implementation of their social planning. The idea that pure science should… Read More »| Driverless Crocodile
The latest book review from The Psmiths (Jane, this time) is itself an excellent read. As she says, “forget everything you think you know about cargo cults”. Here’s a highlight to get you started: “Cargo” is the catchall word for Western material culture in Pidgin English,4 the lingua franca of New Guinea’s many language isolates,… Read More »Jane Psmith on Cargo Cults, local politics and mutual misunderstanding The post Jane Psmith on Cargo Cults, local politics and mutual mi...| Driverless Crocodile
You can’t start a fire without a spark… and fuel… and… Asked what a cause is, we may be tempted to say that it is an event which precedes the event of which it is the cause, and is both necessary and sufficient for the latter’s occurrence; briefly, that a cause is a necessary and… Read More »| Driverless Crocodile
Some foundational assumptions:| Driverless Crocodile
For those who came in late… U.S. Admiral Hyman Rickover – “the father of the nuclear navy” was a man who got things done: Within the span of 10 years, Rickover created an entire office dedicated to nuclear propulsion, and successfully launched the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine without cost overruns. He conclusively demonstrated the strategic… Read More »| Driverless Crocodile
If you want a problem solved in such a way that you’ll never have to think about it again your options are: When we say we want a sustainable solution we’re often in practice asking for a final solution. We’re saying something like: “I want to use this small up-front investment to create a perpetual… Read More »| Driverless Crocodile