Deep up in it. August readings and classes, King of Swords edition

I’m going to start this blog post with a video. I hope you’ll watch it the two authors interviewed are very important to me;

Neil Howe and William , authors of the book The Fourth Turning, are the two gentlemen being interviewed in this video from C-Span that was made in 1997, which was a full three years before the peak (as far as I see it) of the last sixty years of America. Obviously these two were spot on in defining the cycle that our Country is involved with. 9/11 was in fact the crisis that will define this generation, and probably came a long a few years early, but, come it did. It was our generations pearl harbor- the crisis it set off is still going and will continue along for at least another 10 years if not longer.

Recently I got ahold of the book “The Next 100 years: A Forecast” by George Friedman. It tries to follow along the same idea of trying to define the future via an understanding of history. I feel like it kind of misses the mark in areas, (most notably in its definition of a 50 year cycle that America is in) and in other areas it succeeded quite nicely. The basic premise of TNOY is that countries are much more limited in the choices they have, and are “locked in” on certain paths or choices that they must make. While I disagree with a lot of the outcomes/scenarios that Friedman comes to (a world war in 2050 in a confrontation of Poland backed by the US vs Turkey backed by Japan) I do like the chess board style of though that Friedman engages in; it makes you think about a lot of scenarios in the next 100 years that are likely to develop, and their consequences (Russia trying to reconsolidate losses from the Soviet Era and tries to expand east, runs up against Germany/Poland, and collapses, along with a divided China trying to balance the countryside vs the cities in the east) and what power means (North America will be the prevailing power on the planet for the next 100 years due to its Geography linking east to west).

Overall, its a good read but I don’t buy the idea that America will be drawn into a world war via space based sneak attack from the Japanese in the middle of the century- Its all a bit contrived but, on the other hand, works, in a weird way.

I’m about half way through a biography of Napoleon, “Napoleons Wars, and International History.” Along with the previous book, the integrate nicely with the class that I finally finished from SDU, “Politics and Warfare.” all three have me thinking much more cause/effect/cause and grand strategy lately, a lot more than usual, which I think is good because I can feel a new direction beginning to manifest in my life right now. that’s another story, however.

Speaking of war, I also just finished Joe Hadlemans “The Forever War.” Its one of those old sci fi novels that I wanted to read back in the day but never got around to absorbing…and absorb I did. It should most definatley be read in conjunction with Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, Enders Game, and Frank Herbert’s Dune. and no, that doesn’t mean watch the movies. Read the books, which are striking in the ideas they put forth. What was unique about the forever war in contrast to Starship Troopers are the respective authors experience with the Military- both had gone through it, but both had gone through very different experiences. Starship Troopers was much more of a military fanboy via ww2 filter on ideas an concepts. Starship Troopers ends up reading like a delightful military adventure, where no one gets hurt and its all roses and kisses. “The Forever War” was much more complex in the ideas it puts out. The protagonists end up in an interstellar war, which, because of the effects of time dilation when traveling at the speed of light, stretches the the length of the war to almost 1000 years. Each time the protagonist comes back, society has changed drastically, to the point where homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuality is the aberration in a response to population control, and a new clone based version of humanity has evolved. Made me think a lot and left me feeling odd at the end. Read all four books above and make your own mind up about what to think, but read them you should.

As far as classes go, I finished the It98 class from De Paul University. It was all read via a synthesized voice on the computer and I really enjoyed it. It had a lot of redundant information in it (especially the networking portion, which I learned in the CBT Nuggets cisco CDENT audio guide I took).

I’m knee deep in a Programing Methodology class I picked up from Stanford, and I’m deeply grateful that the class was made available- while this isn’t the first time I’ve ever taken a full blown programing class, this is the first time I’ve stuck with one and have grown to really like it. So often programing instructors start off at a level they really shouldn’t be teaching at, and don’t abstract the ideas within to a acceptable level- I remember my first programing class at the University of New Mexico,  C++.   The professor drove away 9/10 students within the first 2 weeks of class with her babbling. It made no sense and made me feel ripped off by the university itself. I have taken some high level programing classes- HTML and CSS– which are as easy as it gets when it comes to programing. This class is teaching Java and for the first time i really do get wtf it is they’re talking about. Actually, It’s all pretty easy and makes a fair amount of sense, however, i often wonder why so many programmers make programing languages quite as hard as they do. Even though Java is supposed to be an easy language to pick up, It still feels clunky. I suppose one of these days someone will write a language that isn’t a bunch of damned (*)__+_~~==! and bullshit.

Along with the java class i got ahold of “Change and Motion: Calculus Made Clear” I’m about a third of the way through and finally get calculus, well, at least the ideas behind it, fairly well. These two classes prove to me that most schooling makes learning way more difficult than it needs to be. Its like, wtf man, why cant you just tell me up front what you/re going to teach me instead of having me do a billion mindless little tasks which don’t lead me anywhere till five years into it? I fucking detest that style of teaching, to the point of where it makes me think that an instructor is piss poor and shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing. Just tell me whats up, don’t make it a mystery, fuckers.

That’s pretty much it for right now…Burning Man is next week so I don’t think I’ll have a post up again till afterwards. Hopefully I’ll have finished at least a few more classes and books by then. I’ll try to get my reviews up as quickly as possible.  In the last month I’ve gone to San Diego three times from Albuquerque and had my wallet lost/stolen along with working full time so I haven’t gotten quite as much done as I wanted.

(oh and i also am half way through “The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test” by Tom Wolfe and fucking love it- a perfect follow up to On the Road which I finished a few months ago. I highly recommended this read.