What a great line!! Coming Anarchy a couple of days ago offers some insight into the military’s subservience to the Great God of PowerPoint – check out the slide on the link – “…yup, we know the problem is complex...” Oh yeah, you think…? or do you…? One really has to wonder why someone even bothered to create the slide, because it’s pretty certain that not too many people are going to attempt to decypher it  and even less across a darkened briefing room. Once upon a time there was a simple acronym about simplicity – yup, you got it…KISS…Keep It Simple, Stupid. Now it seems to be Keep It Stupid, Simple…

When we were first briefed on Interbella in 2008, the very first thing that leapt out at me was ‘Wow, baby, what a great tool for illustrating complex issues and relationships…!” But even Interbella is somewhat limited if the audience doesn’t have at least a grasp of the core issues to start with. I think that our reliance on PowerPoint is symptomatic of our growing intellectual laziness where we want information to be served up in a nice tidy PowerPoint slide and free ourselves of the onerous task of actually reading and extracting relevant material for ourselves.

And here’s a link to the original brief which includes the branding for the contacted consultants responsible. Consultants? We have to pay people to develop crap like this? Have we so much lost or given away the ability to think for ourselves…?

Standing up

I’ve been offline (and loving it) since a few days before Christmas – I see that some nutcase (let’s not point fingers by naming religions or anything and just keep this guy where he belongs in the dangerous nutcase box) tried to blow himself up while airborne on Christmas Day.

How about just for once, we don’t go all idiot and lambast the intelligence community for yet another failure. You think that they’re not away of it already without having every commentator (few, if any, of whom have actually been in the hot seat themselves) on the planet point it out? Maybe we all need to have a good hard look at ourselves and do some internal finger-pointing? At what point do WE stand up and start to take personal responsibility for what goes on around US and not just expect ‘someone else to look after it’?

There was an interesting article in the inbox last night, comparing the Israeli approach to airport security to that of CONUS. While the grass is always greener and everyone else always does it better, this article has a subtle implication that WE all could contribute to OUR own security a little more by paying attention to what goes on around US and NOT taking the soft option when something concerns US. The Information Militia in action again…this isn’t just about Crimestoppers, this is about US taking ownership of the world WE live in and if not making it better, certainly helping to stop it getting any worse…

Peter over at The Strategist has been busy over the holiday period and published a number of articles on self help in the interest of both the environment and personal wellness – sometimes it is just as simple as getting ‘on yer bike’. I enjoyed his short article on the restored railway station in Waverley – we are lucky to have a similar restored station just up the road in National Park and I may shoot up there for a coffee once I get this online.

Understanding the Environment

Steven Pressfield has the latest in his series on engaging the tribes in Afghanistan – still IMHO, the only solution for that country – with Shame and Honor, not Hearts and Minds: an interview with William S. “MAC” McCallister, #2 Not too many arrows in this one…