COH 2 WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

http://www.gamereplays.org/companyofheroes/portals.php?show=news&news_id=897250

Haters gonna haaaaateee

Edit: At the risk of people taking me too seriously (through no fault of their own), I must qualify: The mind is like a zoo. There are many kinds of thoughts in it, big and small, herbivorous, carnivorous or omnomnomivorous. This one's going for a walk tonight:

With reference to recent articles concerning Yale-NUS College:

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/sep/03/yale-nus-detractors-paper-campus-fliers/?cross-campus
http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/jul/20/unease-grows-over-freedoms-yale-nus/
http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/mar/23/fischer-yale-nus-is-not-yale/

The Yale Daily News is by and large reporting objectively events which happen on campus, with the obvious exception of guest Op-ed articles. For this we should grateful, for in that respect at least does Yale stay representative of the America I know and love. However, the quality of the dialogue of what I understand to be a vocal minority is disappointing, but perhaps not unexpected - and with poetic license can be seen as a microcosm of the rhetoric which tends to be flung around in the larger States during this election year.

Complaining is part of Singapore's national identity - we sometimes get the general sense that we are prone and good at it even though we arguably complain as much as the peoples of any other First-World nation, with our First-World problems. I am recently compelled to claim this part of our popular identity, as my rage burns against the following sin:

#1 Ignorance

'Autocratic', 'do not support freedom of expression' and other phrases and words like them are hardly explored rigorously within the context. Some parties in the conversation are demonstrating logical immaturity, lack of nuance or just not giving a flying fuck about what Singapore actually looks like in real life. Last some people looked in the direction of Singapore, they saw the Chinese Cultural Revolution complete with dictator, red stars and police state. Which is understandable because everyone knows Singapore is in China. Many great American masters of rhetoric and public figures did effectively deploy hyperbole in order to satiricize something that wasn't right about their country. Now that lots of them are dead (and thereby worthy of monuments and meeting room names), their nation's children have learnt to equate hyperbolic language with literal truth. These children of this great nation are in grave danger - of becoming ignorant retards.

To be fair, age 18 to 22 is a forgivable time to be an ignorant retard. But as the Bible tells us that God will judge teachers of the Word twice as strictly, I take issue with ignorant retards who spread their contagion.

Lots of us agree that Singapore is not a perfect place. But it sure doesn't look like the run-of-the-mill police state where the cops are coiled up like a crouching tiger ready to pounce on any hint of dissent. I know because we young men of Singapore are the Police, and the Army and the Civil Defense. Our average oppressor-of-the-people sits in a guardhouse munching on a small palm-sized green spongecake thinking of the next fever or shoulder dislocation he can get or going home to slaughter demons made by American game companies. And earning real USD from the lucky drop from a blue mob which will never come. Far be it from him that he would have to do the paperwork associated with shooting, gassing or beating the shit out of 19-year-old protesters running around on their own neatly-trimmed school lawn. He probably doesn't even understand what they're so agitated about.

"Once freedom of expression is compromised at Yale-NUS, how comfortable can anyone feel that it will continue to be strenuously defended on the New Haven campus? Will Yale faculty feel uncomfortable about expressing views critical of the Singaporean government, perhaps out of fear of damage to our so-called colleagues at our satellite campus in Singapore, or perhaps out of fear of retribution from the Yale administration that has as-yet-undisclosed financial ties with the Singaporean government? Ethical standards cannot be compromised a little bit at a time and retain any force."

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/mar/23/fischer-yale-nus-is-not-yale/

Academic research is a lot of theorycraft. But those tend to be thesis-length, that is many many tens of pages worth of content. Real content.

I cannot respect a theorycraft composed of mainly a bucket of bullshit with tiny grains of truth of 1-2 pages long. I urge the wider public to recognize that there are easier ways of obtaining those tiny grains of truth than sticking one's hand into the bucket of brownshit to look for it. Yale has been and probably is still full of smart people who know better than to odyssey through that bucket. To Singaporean counter-ragers, let me point out that the Internet is a big place, and that probably less than 50 people out of the entire Yale or wider American community have been high profiler bloggers, journalists or commenters on Yale-NUS issues. That means a lot of people not feeling the need to talk for whatever reason. Most probably aren't bothered enough, and that's fine, especially if they're busy contributing academically, creatively or otherwise to the body of American higher education. I appeal to these people to be proud of the decent things they do in their own world some seas away from here, to be proud that they are decent American students and intelligentsia. Not self-righteous, intellectually irresponsible wankers who are more interested in stirring up insecurity.

/rant

Be careful what animals get let into the conversation.

=oooooooooooo

O HAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Journey together!

Omar Khayyam was an 11th-century Persian poet, philosopher, and mathematician, whose collected quatrains are known as the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Despite a strong Islamic background, Omar Khayyam was in fact a religious skeptic--therefore his writings were often infused with mysticism, and advocated the enjoyment of earthly delights in the face of mortality. The refrain 'Hamsáfár' means 'journey together,' and is a rallying call to all people--and like the earlier song Se É Pra Vir Que Venha (which shares common musical motifs), the song emphasizes the contentment to be found in living in the present. Lyrics:

Khorshide cámánd sobh bár bam áfkánád Keykhosro rooz badeh dár jam áfkánád May khor ke monadi sáhárgah khyzan Avazye áshráboo dár áyam áfkánád Hamsáfár! Ey doost bia ta gháme fárda nákhorim Vin yekdám omr ra ghánimát shemorim Fárda ke áz in dayre Kohán dárgoárim Ba háfthezarsalegan hámsáfárim In chárkhofálák ke ma dár uo heyranim Fanoose khyal áz uo messali danim Khorshide cheraghdano alám fanoos Ma chon sovárim kándáro gerdanim Ráhe khyish gozin The sun with its morning light the earth ensnare The king celebrated the day with a wine so fair The herald of dawn intoxicated would blare Its fame and aroma, for time having not a care Journey together! O friend, for the morrow let us not worry This moment we have now, let us not hurry, When our time comes, we shall not tarry With seven thousand-year-olds, our burden carry. This Universal wheel, this merry-go-round In our imagination we have found The sun a flame, in the Cosmic lantern bound We are mere ghosts, revolving, the flame surround. Choose your way.

http://christophertin.com/callingalldawns.html

Discipline

If I want to get anything done in life, I gotta be a monk.

Mortality

Life can be short. On hindsight, I should have wondered this myself when hurtling through treacherous mountain paths on a small metal box on wheels and sugar, driven by a complete stranger, with a crew of 6-7 in the back half of the box. The view from a sheer cliff looks really pretty, so long as one isn't angling one's head down too much.

Another in/accident this week had, again on hindsight, the potential to change my life for the rest of its duration; however long or short that might be. If that van had come at higher speed, at a more acute angle, if those bushes weren't there, if the car wasn't on the slowest lane; more things than the car could have been damaged. The impact of that van would have had more than one shockwave. Luckily, my life wasn't changed all that much.

The consideration of the "what if" disturbs me. The privilege to go on living and the possibility of it being taken away all of a sudden hasn't entered conscious thought for quite some time already, if not ever. That I haven't thought of it all this time when life hung as fragile as it always does also disturbs me further, and more importantly, my own attitude toward being a mortal being. The sudden appreciation that one isn't invincible as one would like to be. Oh dear. Though we in relatively peaceful Singapore are less likely to be shot, blown into small pieces, get lynched, starve, freeze or dehydrate than other less fortunate people in the world, that's never stopped fate from being creative or being pure cruel.

I guess I don't have much of a right to assume much more since this experience wasn't anywhere near tragic or traumatic. I'll get my chance later.

A Rant on Infantry Training

There is a huge difference in the way we train our soldiers and the way armies which actually fight wars in the modern day (or probably in the past as well) train their soldiers. The average soldier in our army is very sure that he (or Singapore for that matter) will not be involved in any large-scale conventional warfare in the near future – no conflict involving himself or those he knows anyway. The same cannot be said of armies who live ‘on the edge’ so to speak. Although commanders explain to him the purpose and application of the training, and although he himself may understand in theory, he is not willing to put effort into the training commiserating with the important function it ultimately serves – to save his life. Even commanders are tacitly willing to lower training standards because of this, or otherwise accept less than what their soldiers are capable of. There is no life-threatening purpose to spur higher training standards. Even the safety culture may be perceived to encourage this – the message is sent out: it is not worth injuring or killing oneself in the course of training over these two years, even if it means lowering training standards; one’s own life ahead of these two years is more important than the army’s developing its fullest capability to fight especially in terms of psychological preparation. This tacitly implies that not risking our life is more important than developing full combat potential – it is difficult to preach both at the same time, yet we do. When we imagine all the possible ways in which soldiers can be trained to more fully realize what it means to fight in a war, the idea that “safety culture without compromising training standards” probably rings hollow deep within us. The soldier’s purpose is to be prepared to sacrifice his life (or more accurately, make his enemy sacrifice their lives) to achieve his nation’s purposes, much like soldier ants in the natural world; the most sacrifices many of our soldiers make is to work overtime or not book-out. More angst is given to these sorts of sacrifices more than the sort of sacrifices soldiers really make when the bullets fly.

I will comment on urban operations training as I feel more confident in my apprehension of it in general. The first thing soldiers are taught are the basic drills: room-clearing, window-clearing and all variations of it; team-level, section-level, with or without grenade. There is nothing wrong in practicing drills; it is a good thing in fact, to train the reflexes and subconscious of soldiers. The training cannot stop there however, and it is the onus on unit commanders to engineer ways to develop the proficiency of soldiers further than what the textbook teaches; doing that will increase survivability. Unfortunately, there seems to be very little active emphasis on this. To be a good combatant, especially in UO, one must receive training of the mind, whether formal or informal. It is said that UO requires high levels of initiative and flexibility at the small unit level; very true. At the higher levels, officers also require good command and control in the urban environment but I shan’t touch on that so much since I’m a spec; I’m not so qualified to talk about it authoritatively.

What does it mean to train the mind? It means so many things. For example, if a grenade appears in front of a soldier at a stairwell, how does he react? There are many things he could do; 1) be stunned and die, 2) shout ‘Grenade!’ and amble down the stairs with his comrades, 3) yell at the top of his lungs ‘GRENADE’ and dive down the stairs, 4) throw the grenade somewhere away from the team, 5) throw the grenade back in the direction of the enemy 6) jump on top of the grenade and sacrifice himself to save his fellow soldiers. What determines which option a soldier will take? His mind. The soldier’s mind apprehends, or fails to apprehend the variety of options available to him (badly trained soldiers usually fail to apprehend all options except 1). To say that the quality of a soldier’s mind is dependent on the amount and quality of experience he has had is correct. I feel that it will not do to educate a soldier’s mind with theoretical slides trying to detail every single possibility in UO, nor will it be very effective to exhort soldiers to do ‘A’ when presented with ‘B’. This is because it does not breed creativity, but rather fixes the soldiers on formulaic scenarios, which is not what we want to achieve in training effective urban fighters. The best way, in my opinion, to train soldiers’ minds, is to strip the game down to its bare minimum. Yes, it is a ‘game’ so to speak; a deadly one. The barest minimum is: our side must win and the enemy must lose. No other outcome is acceptable. Often the extensions of this basic objective are: 1) Lose as few soldiers as possible, 1A) Evacuate friendly wounded as fast as possible, 2) Kill as many enemies as possible, 3) Achieve our mission objectives as fast as possible, 4) Conserve ammunition as much as possible, 5) Survive; so on and so forth. Once soldiers truly grasp this fundamental objective, as well as the fact that survival (but above that, victory) depends on it, they will start to feel purpose, and therefore motivation, and therefore be more receptive to training, if not show more initiative during it. Furthermore, once they grasp this and realize the near-infinite ways of winning and losing in the UO game, they will start to become smarter. The next thing soldiers need to know after the fundamental objective of the game is understood, is the tools they have at their disposal to achieve it. Weapons, equipment, environment, actions, comrades, the enemy’s own perception, one’s own body are tools to achieve victory. Again, as with the case of the grenade, it is the soldier’s mind which apprehends or fails to apprehend the variety of tools he has available. Once soldiers become proficient at using their tools to beat the game; that is when they have become good UO fighters. All these are really not very complicated ideas, yet we tend to lose sight of them very often for some reason.

/rant