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Book Review: Come and Take Them I

FP is the first to review Come and Take Them, by Tom Kratman.

Tom Kratman is one of
today’s premier practitioners of military-oriented fiction. His
“CarreraVerse” SF series and his “Countdown”
just-barely-future series both display his talents in that genre.
Come And Take Them is the latest entry in the “CarreraVerse”
line, wherein retired soldier Patrick Hennesey di Carrera returns to
the colors in service to his adopted home of Balboa on Terra Nova,
against all enemies foreign and domestic, and in so doing reshapes
the politics of his world.

Terra Nova is a
designed world. The hypothesized race that designed it,
conventionally called the Noahs, appear to have intended it for
eventual human occupancy. Whether they knew that Man would bring his
legacy of strife along with him, no one can say. In any case, the
inter-religious and international animosities that gave rise to so
much warfare on Old Earth have found their way to the new world, and
Carrera has been in the thick of them for five volumes with more to
come.
The Timocratic Republic
of Balboa owes its current political structure and much else to
Carrera and President Raul Parilla. That structure depends heavily on
the Legion del Cid, created by Carrera and Parilla to provide
Balboa with a military of high quality. It has also been an
instrument for the transformation of their nation, as readers of the
first three books — A Desert Called Peace, Carnifex, and The
Lotus Eaters — will already be aware.
The other nations of
Terra Nova are not happy about Balboa’s acquisition of such a
powerful, politically dominant fighting force. To Balboa’s west, the
Tauran Union, a multinational alliance in the style of today’s
European Union but with many more soldiers and guns, seeks to
impose its will on the small republic. It’s an effort in which the
Taurans have the support of the orbiting “Peace Fleet” from
Old Earth. Nominally there only to suppress warfare below, the Peace
Fleet has the additional mission of preventing Terra Nova or any of
its nations from becoming capable of threatening the corrupt
hereditary oligarchy that bestrides the mother world. To that end,
its masters would dearly love to see the threat of Balboa put down
for good.
Come And Take Them
concerns itself with events before and during the Tauran Union’s
attempt to evict the Carrera-designed government of Balboa, and to
install a puppet regime biddable by the TU’s masters. Its timespan is
roughly coextensive with that from the end of The Lotus Eaters
through the events of The Amazon Legion. As one might
expect of a novel from a specialist in military fiction, much of the
book is concerned with war and the preparations for it. However,
Kratman has another mission alongside that one: to depict the
swelling of regret within Carrera himself over having militarized his
nation, thus exposing it to the enmity of the Taurans and others.
Carrera has sickened of
bloodshed, and is particularly contrite about the all but certain
high price his nation will pay when it faces off against the Taurans,
as he believes, correctly, it must. However, he’s a soldier, bound to
his profession as much by its ethic as by his aptitudes and
experience. Despite the certainty of mass death, he contrives a plan
by which his tiny republic can defeat the far larger Tauran Union,
and in so doing create a continent-sized political upheaval that
might result in a new birth of freedom for millions beyond Balboa’s
borders.
Come And Take Them
is a big book, replete with plot subthreads and secondary adventures
in which Supporting Cast characters rise to local prominence, whether
they live and triumph or fail and die. There are splashes of highly
colored drama throughout the action. The reader is advised to give it
his full attention, perhaps with the aid of a large map of Balboa and
a lot of little counters to represent the units fighting over it. A
dramatis personae annotated with character sketches and
timelines might also be advisable. Though it must be read slowly and
with concentration to get the maximum enjoyment from its richness,
the effort is amply repaid.
There will be more
segments in the “CarreraVerse” series. The best way to
prepare for them is to absorb this one in all its bright and gory
spectacle, and to reflect on the questions that forever hang over all
tests of arms: How high a price ought one to be willing to pay for
one’s objectives? At what point must a man, a commander, or a nation
say, “Enough,” and act accordingly?
The thrust of the
question may change according to whether the lead is or is not
already flying, but its urgency does not. From the vengeance and bloodshed of A Desert Called Peace and the steady army and nation-building of Carnifex and The Lotus Eaters, Come And Take Them continues the completion of a portrait of patriotism, heroism, and the ultimate price that must be paid in their service. Highly recommended.

Artist wanted

We’re keeping JartStar is more than a little busy these days, so we’re now on the lookout for a part-time 2D/3D artist to crank out more banners and portraits for First Sword.  If you happen to be one who can do this sort of thing and you’re interested, please shoot me an email. I’ll be posting this in the usual places in about a week, but I thought I’d give the Ilk the first shot.

The world you live in

This is not The Onion, this is the government pitching its free services. Isn’t it wonderful that idiot sluts can now sign up for federally funded birth control so that men can sexually penetrate them at will without having to worry about getting them pregnant?

It should be amusing when the fine print changes and all the federally funded sluts discover that the price of their free birth control is the requirement to provide sexual services to bankers.

This is the sort of thing that makes one start that the global jihad might be the better alternative. It’s very difficult to look crazier and less sustainable than religious fanatics with a 7th century ideology who shoot women in the head for learning how to read, but Otherly Insane America has somehow managed it. Thanks Obamacare!

Dangerous female delusion

This “woman warrior” meme may eventually get a woman killed. And it will all be Joss Whedon’s fault.

UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey recently spoke with Spanish-language daily Hoy newspaper and said that, under the right circumstances, she believes that she could beat heavyweight king Cain Velasquez.

“In any given moment, under the right circumstance, I think it is possible,” Rousey said of beating Velasquez when asked if she thought she could.

“You cannot tell me that it is physically impossible. It is possible that in any given moment that I could beat him. I simply believe in my possibilities.”

The Olympic judo bronze medalist never seems to lack in confidence but her assertion that she could beat Velasquez despite giving up about a hundred pounds in weight, might seem over the top. Before you’re quick to criticize “Rowdy” Ronda as delusional, however, remember that competitive fighting is necessarily an audacious practice.

In order to have a chance at successfully facing the tension of a fight, fighters need to believe in themselves to a ridiculous degree. In effect, all Rousey is saying is that, in a hypothetical situation where she had to fight Velasquez for some insane reason, she wouldn’t just curl up and die – she’d fight on and believes that she’d find a way to win somehow.

I suppose it’s true, if by “under the right circumstance” she means that she is armed with a .357 revolver and Velasquez is blindfolded with his arms and legs chained to a wooden pole.

But if she’s talking about the octagon, the fact is that Rousey not only couldn’t beat Velasquez, she couldn’t last two minutes with me or any other man under the age of 60 who has even a modicum of genuine martial arts experiment. Keep in mind that Rousey weighs all of 135 pounds. I weigh a good deal less than Velasquez and I curl that much weight. In fact, I did 8×110 this very afternoon. Also, she clearly has no idea how much faster men are than her, nor how little ability she has to take a full-force blow from a bigger, stronger, faster man.

As I mentioned before, I once tried to go toe-to-toe with 225-pound Marine at a time when I gave up about 50 pounds to him. I was just as strong as he was; we lifted together a few times. And being faster, I may have even hit him a little harder than he hit me, but I simply couldn’t stand up to his shots the way he could take mine. It’s not about being tough, it’s about having enough mass to absorb the force that is striking you.

Anyhow, the sooner someone makes Rousey put her body where her mouth is, the sooner this lunacy will end. It’s just irresponsible for female fighters like her to be mouthing off in this regard because as long as the warrior woman delusion persists, there is a chance some idiot girl is going to get her skull fractured as a result.

Wine and arrogance stop ADHD

It would appear that my descendants will never suffer from ADHD:

In the United States, at least 9% of school-aged children have been diagnosed with ADHD, and are taking pharmaceutical medications. In France, the percentage of kids diagnosed and medicated for ADHD is less than .5%. How come the epidemic of ADHD—which has become firmly established in the United States—has almost completely passed over children in France?

Is ADHD a biological-neurological disorder? Surprisingly, the answer to this question depends on whether you live in France or in the United States. In the United States, child psychiatrists consider ADHD to be a biological disorder with biological causes. The preferred treatment is also biological–psycho stimulant medications such as Ritalin and Adderall.

French child psychiatrists, on the other hand, view ADHD as a medical condition that has psycho-social and situational causes. Instead of treating children’s focusing and behavioral problems with drugs, French doctors prefer to look for the underlying issue that is causing the child distress—not in the child’s brain but in the child’s social context. They then choose to treat the underlying social context problem with psychotherapy or family counseling. This is a very different way of seeing things from the American tendency to attribute all symptoms to a biological dysfunction such as a chemical imbalance in the child’s brain.

I suspect that another major difference is that the European schools are far less feminized than the American schools.  Most “ADHD” is little more than mothers and female teachers drugging little boys due to their inability to behave like little girls.

It’s not so much that the French schools are doing it right as the American schools are at war with human nature and the male sex. The lesson, as always, is this: sending children to a public school in America is child abuse.

Karl Denninger notes that all this drugging of young boys comes at a very real price to society as well: “The problem with our approach is that it not only doesn’t work it creates monsters.  Yes, statistically, it doesn’t create very many monsters.  But it does create some of
them and in fact the clinical trial data discloses quite-clearly that
these risks and their percentage of outcome numbers are known.”

Of course, from the perspective of society’s would-be masters, this is a bonus. Not only are the troublemakers turned into zombies, but the occasional pharma-psychological mishap creates political pressure for gun control. If they’re willing to see more than 9 percent of the school population chemically lobotomized, they’re obviously not going to lose any sleep over a much smaller number of cherubic kindergarteners or cheerleaders being gunned down.

A techno-historical landmark

Apple, the Computer History Museum, and the immortal Paul Laughton have made the source code for the original Apple II DOS available for public use:

Apple only had about 15 employees, and none of them had both the skills and the time to work on it. The magician who pulled that rabbit out of the hat was Paul Laughton, a contract programmer for Shepardson Microsystems, which was located in the same Cupertino office park as Apple.

On April 10, 1978 Bob Shepardson and Steve Jobs signed a $13,000 one-page contract for a file manager, a BASIC interface, and utilities. It specified that “Delivery will be May 15″, which was incredibly aggressive. But, amazingly, “Apple II DOS version 3.1″ was released in June 1978.

With thanks to Paul Laughton, in collaboration with Dr. Bruce Damer, founder and curator of the DigiBarn Computer Museum, and with the permission of Apple Inc., we are pleased to make available the 1978 source code of Apple II DOS for non-commercial use.

In these days of 36-month development programs with teams in the triple digits, it is incredible to think of an operating system being delivered in months. It’s great to see that some of the early computing world’s history is being saved. I would encourage anyone who has an interest in technology to save these documents and thereby increase the chances they will survive for the perusal of future generations.

I spent hours at the Radio Shack playing Akalabeth. I spent more time than I can possibly estimate in the chilly, otherwise empty room down in the basement playing everything from Wizardry to Ultima to Seven Cities of Gold and Alpine Adventure on the Apple //e that my father later bought me. I never really learned to program anything serious, much to my later regret, but I did acquire a near-encyclopedic knowledge of games, and more importantly, the mechanics that underlie them.

So I ended up becoming a sophisticated user and designer rather than a programmer. There are worse fates. And despite my loathing for what Apple became, I still have great affection for the Apple II and all those early games. In fact, I have CandyApple installed on all of my various Android devices and was showing Swashbuckler to Ender just the other day when we were waiting for an appointment.

Live by the sword, die by the sword

A fitting end to an inglorious military career:

The man in charge of the Air Force’s sexual-harassment enforcement
was himself indicted on a sexual assault charge in an Arlington court
Monday. Lieutenant-Colonel Jeffrey Krusinki was arrested back in May for allegedly groping a woman in Arlington. She claims he grabbed her breasts and buttocks in a parking lot in Crystal City.

It will be amusing when McRapey and McCreepy find themselves similarly hoist on their own petards, will it not? Even if they don’t do anything to deserve it, it’s just a matter of time before someone finds it in her interest to launch an accusation or two.

It’s inevitable. Why? Voltaire’s Prayer. Consider the following evidence:

Wil Wheaton ‏@wilw
Cat: I love you so much!. Me: Aww. I love you, too. Cat: Feed me. Me: I already fed you. Cat: Feed me again. Me: Um, no. Cat: I hate you.

UPDATE: Well, that was quicker than expected. Remember when I said that Alpha Game would eventually pass up Whatever too?

scalzi.com
47,446 USA Rank

alphagameplan.blogspot.com
46,497 USA Rank

In truth, this is more an indictment of the Alexa ranking system than anything else; the biggest and most importantest science fiction site ever still gets more monthly pageviews than Alpha Game’s 349,623 monthly average. But I find the comparative rankings to be more than a little amusing in light of the rabbits who appealed to these sorts of estimated traffic rankings less than a year ago.

Confessions of a Credit Easer

A mea culpa from the manager of the Federal Reserve’s mortgage-backed security purchase program:

Confessions of a Quantitative Easer

We went on a bond-buying spree that was supposed to help Main Street. Instead, it was a feast for Wall Street.

I can only say: I’m sorry, America. As a former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for executing the centerpiece program of the Fed’s first plunge into the bond-buying experiment known as quantitative easing. The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I’ve come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.

Five years ago this month, on Black Friday, the Fed launched an unprecedented shopping spree. By that point in the financial crisis, Congress had already passed legislation, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, to halt the U.S. banking system’s free fall. Beyond Wall Street, though, the economic pain was still soaring. In the last three months of 2008 alone, almost two million Americans would lose their jobs.

The Fed said it wanted to help—through a new program of massive bond purchases. There were secondary goals, but Chairman Ben Bernanke made clear that the Fed’s central motivation was to “affect credit conditions for households and businesses”: to drive down the cost of credit so that more Americans hurting from the tanking economy could use it to weather the downturn. For this reason, he originally called the initiative “credit easing.”

My part of the story began a few months later. Having been at the Fed for seven years, until early 2008, I was working on Wall Street in spring 2009 when I got an unexpected phone call. Would I come back to work on the Fed’s trading floor? The job: managing what was at the heart of QE’s bond-buying spree—a wild attempt to buy $1.25 trillion in mortgage bonds in 12 months. Incredibly, the Fed was calling to ask if I wanted to quarterback the largest economic stimulus in U.S. history.

This was a dream job, but I hesitated. And it wasn’t just nervousness about taking on such responsibility. I had left the Fed out of frustration, having witnessed the institution deferring more and more to Wall Street. Independence is at the heart of any central bank’s credibility, and I had come to believe that the Fed’s independence was eroding. Senior Fed officials, though, were publicly acknowledging mistakes and several of those officials emphasized to me how committed they were to a major Wall Street revamp. I could also see that they desperately needed reinforcements. I took a leap of faith.

In its almost 100-year history, the Fed had never bought one mortgage bond. Now my program was buying so many each day through active, unscripted trading that we constantly risked driving bond prices too high and crashing global confidence in key financial markets. We were working feverishly to preserve the impression that the Fed knew what it was doing.

It wasn’t long before my old doubts resurfaced. Despite the Fed’s rhetoric, my program wasn’t helping to make credit any more accessible for the average American. The banks were only issuing fewer and fewer loans. More insidiously, whatever credit they were extending wasn’t getting much cheaper. QE may have been driving down the wholesale cost for banks to make loans, but Wall Street was pocketing most of the extra cash.

If you’ve read RGD, (published in 2009), then you are aware that even at the time it was obvious that the neither the Fed nor the White House was trying to help home buyers. They could have simply written off the debts owed by mortgage holders, but instead, they funneled trillions to Wall Street.

This proves, once more, that the Federal Reserve has zero interest in fixing, saving, or otherwise improving the US economy. It has other objectives, other goals, and it is a category error to even discuss the Fed’s future actions in terms of whether they will be good for the economy or not.

To do so is like discussing whether the future run/pass ratio of the New England Patriots will be good for the New York Yankees. It’s not even relevant to the discussion except perhaps as an unintended consequence.  And notice that they changed the name from credit easing to quantitative easing just to make the concept harder to grasp for the average American. Simple, but effective, because MPAI.

Mailvox: Are Christians “required to be dicks”?

LudVanB objects to the idea that atheists should be expelled from Christian organizations:

“Not all Christians are required to be dicks, Vox”

To which Myrddin responded:

Actually, if we behave the way Christ and his apostles behaved:

  1. To honest seekers: Be gentle.
  2. To scoffers in private: Avoid them.
  3. To scoffers in public: Humiliate them.
  4. To people who claim to be part of the church, but are willfully and proudly disobeying: Kick them out.
  5. To false teachers: Silence them and/or kick them out.
  6. To those who repent: Welcome them back.

Notice under churchian definitions, in four of those six situations, Christians are required to be dicks.

Let’s see if we can  find Scriptural justification for Myrddin’s claims. I’ll start with the two that are relevant to yesterday’s discussion, numbers (4) and (5).

(4) 2 Thessalonians 3:6: “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers and sisters, to keep away from every believer who is idle and disruptive and does not live according to the teaching you received from us.”

1 Corinthians 5: 11-13 “I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.””
 
(5) James 3:1: “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.”

2 Peter 2:1: “But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves.”

The lesson, as always, is this: never listen to an atheist attempting to lecture you on theological matters. They literally do not know what they are talking about.

The one benefit of Obamacare

Lost in all the reports of web site problems, presidential lies, and
millions of Americans losing their insurance have been the two real
crimes of Obamacare. The first crime is the way in which Obamacare does
not reform health insurance, but rather, eliminates it altogether.

Health insurance is a form of gambling. It is betting on one’s
ability to take care of one’s health except for the rare possibility of
unexpected and ruinously expensive catastrophes. It has very little to
do with going to the doctor, with birth control, or with the vast
majority of things that fall more properly under the heading of health
care services.

Read the rest at Absolute Rights.


NB: I was recently offered a regular spot as a contributor at Absolute Rights, and since I’m no longer blogging at Black Gate, I figured I have the time to do so without having a negative effect on my posts here. I’ll be posting political items there a couple of times per week, so you may wish to consider adding it to your regular rotation.