Fixing Toshiba Canvio Connect External HDD

A very specific post on a problem that I faced and resolved yesterday. It appears to be quite common, so I hope this can be useful for others out there.

I bought a Toshiba Canvio Conenct 1TB to store movies and watch them on a TV with USB port, but at first the drive was unusable: it kept disconnecting every 10 min or so and needed to be unplugged and replugged to resume working.

A brief internet search gave interesting results: the drive is factory-configured to enter either standby or spin-down mode after a little while (I tend to think it's standby in fact), and that causes the TV to lose connection ot the disk.

So I connected the Canvio to my Ubuntu machine and did as suggested in the Toshiba forum:

   sudo hdparm -B /dev/

But in fact this only returned an error message ("Invalid exchange") and only basic information on the drive; I could not see what power management mode was factory-set for the drive.

Undeterred, I tried :

   sudo hdparm -B 254 /dev/

But I got the same error message as before. So I switched to Root user, drive still connected, and hdparm worked as it should, showing me that the power management was indeed in mode 254 (where 255 is disabled).

Yet, the disc still lost connection from the TV after 10 min. So I read more on the invaluable man page for hdparm and realized that the -S option can be used to set the standby time for the disk.

Directly from Root this time, I gave the command:

   hdparm -S 0 /dev//

to disable the standby/idle timeout. Yet all I got was again "Invalid exchange". Again undeterred, I ejected the drive from the laptop before unplugging, and I tried to watch some other stored movie: the disk kept spinning happily well past the 10 minutes mark.

Resolved? So it seems.

Update 24/04/14: The connection between Canvio and TV (an LG LED model) seems to be very dependent also on the USB cable. Use a quality one with firm connectors for best results.

Self-Satirizing News

From Indonesia:

Nowadays, people are witnessing the Holy Koran being corrupted not only on the interpretation of its content, but also on its procurement.

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has named Golkar lawmaker Zulkarnaen Djabar a suspect in the alleged corruption of the Koran procurement project at the Religious Affairs Ministry.

The scandal may implicate other lawmakers.

Last year, the KPK released a survey stating that the ministry was among the most corrupt government institutions, reminding the public of a long list of graft scandals in an institution that has repeatedly been led by so-called “devout people”. Kyais and ulemas have headed the institution, such as Wahid Hasyim, Mukti Ali, Munawir Sadzali, Tolchah Hasan, Quraish Shihab and Said Agil Husin Al Munawar.

However, the Jakarta Corruption Court sentenced Said Agil Husin Al Munawar, who is known as a hafiz (a person who has memorized the entire contents of the Koran), to five years’ imprisonment in 2006 for his involvement in a graft scandal in managing the Dana Abadi Umat trust fund, or haj fund of the past.

No need to comment further.

Update 17:00:
In other news:

YOGYAKARTA: Hundreds of local people in the village of Candi Binangun in Sleman regency’s Pakem district, flocked to the pasar murah (low-priced market), jointly organized by the Indonesian Islamic University (UII) and PT Sinar Mas, to purchase palm oil sold at reduced prices on Sunday.


The discount market program was aimed at anticipating the food crisis and offsetting the spike in prices of basic food commodities, including cooking oil, that usually occurs in the lead-up to the Ramadhan fasting month, said G. Sulistiyanto, the managing director of Sinar Mas.

Comments to the article?

Typical.


This is an oil which has fats that should be limited just like trans fats; they clog your arteries and can lead to heart problems.

In addition, production of palm oil is leading to deforestation.

Such a program should not be a welcome relief for residents in the face of rising obesity, heart disease and the well-being of the rain forests of Indonesia.

STARVE A JAVANESE, SAVE HIM AND SAVE GAIA!

I Hate California Nazis

I still find it hard to believe, somehow I hope it's an elaborate joke at the expense of the American Right... but I doubt, that would require too much intelligence and sense of strategy.

What am I talking about? Well, this filth: Foreskin Man, the aryan-blonde superhero fighting the evil, circumsizing Jewish monsters.

Is this the last idea from the remains of the KKK or Hitler wannabes? No; in fact it is propaganda material to support a proposal to outlaw male circumcision in the moonbat city of San Francisco.

What to say, thanks for showing where yu truly stay, folks. Better to have nazis out in the open than behind cover. Via the Rottweiler.

Indonesia Is Not Hoplophobic

Here I am, still with some ideas but not much time or inspiration to put them in a written form.

However, I have a practical observation: Indonesians are in general not hoplophobic. When weapons of any kind or firearms are mentioned, more or less all people I know do not cower in fear and neither give me a tirade on the inherent evilness of weapons and the baseness of people using them.

Anyway, this is an ad airing on Indonesian TV these days:

To Each His Own Opinion

I found another example of those statements that make me roll my eyes in disbelief not because they are wrong or stupid, but because statements like those can only come from completely different axioms, if not thought processes.

Without any further ado, let's examine the most curious part.

Their “holy book” is a pagan screed about a moon god written by a pedophile.

Well, ok. Let's get one thing out of the way first: according to the Koran itself, Mohammed consumed his marriage with Aisha when she was 9 years old, which would make him a paedophile for most if not all of modern jurisdictions.

But apart from that, I can't see what is so inherently evil in a "pagan screed about a moon god". Worshipping the moon was a rather common pastime in most of the world and everybody was a pagan before christianity came around. It is quite obvious that "pagan" and "moon god" here are not used for their descriptive value, but are only pejoratives.

In any case, that was just a warm-up. The bizzarre stuff comes later.

[...]
C.) The word “pagan” is a technical term meaning “non-Christian/Jew”.

Yes, it is. But it was used not in its technical meaning - rather, as implying primitive and superstitiuos beliefs.

It is often used to describe people who worship something other than God.

Ah, here we go. I suppose here God is the Christian god, with the implication that there is no other true god out there. Which I think it's fine taking the Bible literally, but other people - particularly those who take a different book literally - would dissent.

This is an old argument, and an intractable one. Until God, Jehova, Allah and all the other supreme beings settle their scores in a Divine Smackdown Tournament for us umans to see, there's no way to tell which one is the mightiest.

“Allah” is a made-up moon god.

That's very interesting. From a mechanistic perspective, all gods are made-up, at least for the part concerning their interaction with humans. What makes the existence of Allah any less provable than the existence of other gods? Moreover, does a theist really want to discuss proof of the existence of god? Many fine philosophers have tackled this issue from both sides, and as far as I know it's still a draw. And what's with that poor Moon again?

There is no such thing as “Allah” as a god except in the minds of Muslims.

There is no such thing as a god except in the minds of Christians. See how easy it is to turn theses arguments around? According to what objective standards and logical reasoning Allah is not a god, while God is? None, I'll tell you. It is only because another holy book says otherwise.

They are, technically, “pagans”.

See above.

[...]
E.) By definition, a true Christian can’t be “evil”.

Should we define evil then? A Christian who causes unjustified sufference and damage to others is not evil? Or he ceases to be a Christian? Which would be a neat argument, but also fallacious.

They may yet be sinners but since they are saved through grace, they are in a different category than a Muslim who is not.

Whose grace? The grace of God I suppose - but then Muslims will have Allah's saving grace, so we are back again in a bind. The only way out of it is to set aside the revealed truth for one's particular religion and adopt standards which may be arbitrary in their own regard, but apply uniformly to members of all religions.

However, setting aside revealed truth is about the last thing believers want to do, so the not-so-merry go-around will just keep spinning.

Why I Homebrew

Yeah, why I do that?

In part, because I'm just curious and like to experiment. Remember, I have done a lot of experiments with vatfuls of chemicals in my past. Sugars and yeast are just a kind of novelty in this regard. It's not for the money, because the amount of time and effort taken by homebrewing is not really worth the few euros of cheap or average booze.

Another reason is that mead, for example, is hard to find here and probably expensive. But I can make my own and control the final outcome - at least I hope. And there's many other ferments that can be tried.

But if you want to know the real dark secret of homebrewing... I'm afraid that the nanny-state will massively curtail our ethilic pleasures in the course of my life, and I want to be ready to thumb my nose at them.

You may think I'm wearing my tinfoil hat now, but consider these facts.

In the last few months, even in Italy we started seeing those annoying "Drink responsibly" messages on alcoholic drinks and in their ads - there's even the website, for fuck's sake! And some politicians were clamoring to raise the legal drinking age from 16 to 18 years.

In Britain, after the war against smoking one against alcohol is being waged: minimum pricing is probably going to be a reality over there.

And considering that we Italians have this detestable habit of adopting the worst fads of the anglo-saxon world after a few years, and that there is that execrable entity if the EU around, I'm afraid that something similar will come.

So if there will be cabals of bootleggers trading in secret vials of yeast and cooking their worts at nighttime in remote locations, I'll be there!

More Homebrewing Adventures

After the fiasco of last year's fermentation experiments, I am at it again. Because only wussies give up at the first failure.

This time, being a hot summer and me being working quite a lot, I decided for a simple and inexpensive approach, following the truism that in a simple system there are less variables to control and complexity can be added later.

And what is more simple than the fermentation of sucrose - common sugar?

But sugar alone will have no taste to speak of, and I keep reading that yeast likes tannin and an acidic environment. Thus, two more ingredients were added to the concoction.

I prepared an infusion of two bags of ceylon tea and a chopped half-lime in one liter of water, then dissolved around 275 grams of sugar in it and brought the syrup to the boil before adding the juice of the half-lime.

I allowed the wort to cool down to room temperature and, using sanitized* funnel and tools I transferred most of it to a sanitized 1.5 liter glass bottle which worked as fermentation tank.

One quarter of bread yeast was dissolved in the remaining wort, and that also transferred to the fermentation tank. I gave it a good shake and capped the bottle with a piece of aluminium foil.

That was around midnight. By next evening, fermentation was vigorous but smooth. I kept the process going for eight days, keeping the bottle as cool as possible - not so easy to do when temperature indoors is around 30 °C; at night I placed my experiment on a windowsill to enjoy cooler air.

Finally, using a sanitized colander and funnel I filtered the mixture into two sanitized plastic bottles of half a liter, for the final fermentation at low temperature (in and out the fridge, in fact).

I tasted some of the liquid and it wasn't so bad. Not as sour as vinegar for sure; it has a strong but not overwhelming sweet aftertaste and some more complex notes from the lime and tea. And quite a strong taste of live yeast, of course.

Alcohol content? I was not able to feel any buzz, but I had a small amount of hooch on a full stomach. Anyway, it is known that wine takes quite some time to develop a respectable strength: I am not despairing.

Developments will be available in no less than a couple of weeks.

*For sanitization I used the easiest way: a dash of bleach in a big bowl of water. Let it act for half a hour and then rinse well all items immediately before use.

Unlikely Extraordinary Ability

Another of the many stupid assumptions of the conspirational mindset is that the military/CIA are almost omnipotent: they have the latest technology, almost unlimited freedom of action anywhere anytime and evil yet cunning planners showing extraordinary creativity and the capacity to foresee any possible contingence.

Well, baloney.

In war, it is not the best and brightest side that becomes the winner, but rather the one that makes less and less catastrophic mistakes. Winners write history and we tend to forget the flaws of the succesful, but the reality is that many battles were won (or lost) out of sheer luck; or because an incompetent commander met an even dumber one; for pride or vanity or even madness; unimaginative officials wasted liberally men and materiel and won only because they had nearly nearly-limitless supplies of both, and on and on.

But if that's not enough, ponder this: the expression SNAFU - Situation Normal, All Fucked Up - was born in military circles. Granted that soldiers have a thing for dark humor, but that does not sound exactly like the description of a hyper-efficient machine.

For every soldier fighting on the battlefield there are many more involved in logistics and maintenance and bureaucracy. And bureaucracies can be many things, but they are not flexible, creative, dynamic or decisive.

Insipient Knowledge

I am completely fed up with the kind of knowledge too many people display. Online discussions are the worst offenders, but cases of this intellectual pathology are rife in real life as well.

I am fed up with notions - actually exact in themselves - picked almost randomly here and there and heaped without any regard for their connections or lack thereof, and the disdain for a coherent and cogent scheme of things (or narrative or paradigm if you like) able to provide context and relations for the various notions.

And of the same randomly acquired notions hastily put together without the binder of logic - the only safeguard against contradictions and fallacies.

The terrible conclusion when I see that widespread insipience is that two entire generations have been taught not how to think and reason properly, but instead what they should think under a sprinkling of facts collected in a haphazard manner.

Sophisticate And Uncouth

In a post from a few days back, reader Zhombre commented:

And for a true redneck, it's baloney, Wonder Bread and beer.

This simple (and innocent) statement made me think about some bigger issues which have repercussions on trans-atlantic relationships (yes, really!).

The main point is that the definition of redneck - or, to use less colloquial terms - the difference between sophisticate and uncouth, is largely a function of the local cultural environment.

In the case at hand, I am sure that drinking wine - even if it's foul-tasting homemade stuff guzzled straight from the bottle - turns one into a sophisticate if not effete chap in the eyes of rural Americans.

Here in Italy, some of the most uncouth and inbred countryside dwellers I know are avid drinkers of wine.

One reason is tradition and history: there is probably nothing more traditional than wine in Italy. This drink has been made and appreciated by countless generations of commons and nobles alike and it is an inextricable part of the local culture.

However, for centuries the commons did not enjoy their wine sipping it at elegant parties, from big, thin goblets while describing its taste and aroma with a collection of rare terms. No, the commons drank their wine in large amounts from small, thick-walled glasses (I remember my grandfather, my friend's grandfather and I have photographs from the first half of the last century) at home or at the local osteria (inn or tavern) and they cared more about alcohol content than taste; some folks quite literally drank wine till the day they died. Quite a few people still make their own wine, here, and it is often less than delicious.

American culture has very mixed roots, but the main influence is Anglo-Saxon: up there, the traditional drinks were ale and cider and mead; later the Americans added moonshine to the list (but kinda forgot about mead, it seems). In England and northern Europe wine has always been something foreign and exotic.

Besides tradition, there is the ages-old rift between countryside and urban dwellers; for a series of reasons which range from higher cultural affinity to the desire of distancing themselves from the uncouth hillbillies, passing through fads and fashions - the urban elites in America have adopted more European* habits.

So, the salt-of-the-earth Americans now automatically associate drinking wine with the effete, metrosexual and leftist urban elites. What they fail to realize is that there is probably less difference between the commons on both sides of the Atlantic (well, ok, the cultural difference is considerable anyway) than between commons and elites within the respective countries/regions.

To make just one example, while elites here and there are for the majority hoplohpobes, many blue-collar workers and professionals and farmers here will tell you that one should be able to use firearms in self-defense without fear of prosecution.

*The habits of the American urban elites seems to me a caricature of European habits, or at least what they'd like them to be rather than the real thing. How many of Manhattan intellectuals would be caught stepping into a bar to drink a glass or two of nondescript wine while still wearing oil-stained work clothes?

Update 02/03/09: I realized only recently that "baloney" is the english term for mortadella.

No Intervention

Fierce fighting has broken out between the ex-soviet republic of Georgia and the secessionist reagion of South Ossetia.

What should we - the West do?
I say, unless there are very important strategic interests at stake, just nothing. Let them slug it out and then deal with the winner.

That's better than the post-modern wars that never end because the "international community" keeps saving the loser's ass.

Of course, in the specific case the Bear isn't going to ignore the racket on its doorstep. Another factor to ponder before deciding for intervention.

Update 09/08: Not surpisingly, Russia has joined the fray. Georgia is pro-western and an USA ally; is it worth to support the republic as a proxy against the reborn Russian expansionism?

Celebrating a Big Bang

Which is the Tinity test, first nuclear explosion of human history, performed on the early morning of 16 July in the Alamogordo Test Range, New Mexico.

With that test shot the nuclear era begun - and so far, despite the megatons detonated by USA and URSS, UK, France, India, Pakistan (and probably also Israel/South Africa and in more recent times North Korea also tried), nuclear weapons have killed much less people, and ravaged less territory, than conventional ones.

Fireballs are oddly fascinating, too. Inspired by the Atomic Nerds.

Another D-Day

How can it be, I was about to forget that today is the 64th anniversary of the Normandy Landing.

Its importance is much more than symbolical; Donald Sensing thinks that Russia would then win the war and dominate all of Europe:

The Soviets certainly would not have slacked their offensives had Normandy failed. If anything, they would have pressed all the harder, but would have pressed equally hard for a much larger share of American war production, insisting that they were making better use of it than we were. As they would have been the only dog in the fight, the demands would have been hard for Roosevelt to resist. Not only would all Germany have become communist, so would France, whose communist cells were very active and which would have benefitted greatly from having the Soviet army literally next door. Imagine the Iron Curtain falling at the English Channel. The Soviet bear would have easily swallowed countries like Denmark, The Netherlands and Belgium. Likewise, Greece's postwar communist insurgency would have succeeded. Italy might easily have turned communist also.

Whether you think that this analysis is correct or not, there is little doubt that a defeat of the Allies in Normandy would have meant a very different course of history.

So yes, the world in which we live today is in great part due to those men who fought on the beaches and flatlands of Normandy during a few days of June 1944.

Obamania Sweeps Italy

Or better, the radical-chic part of my country. Conservatives and most common folks just keep going about their business.

Anyway, the other day at the supermarket I glanced at the front pages of the newspapers, and the most progressive ones had a thinly-disguised severe case of hots for Obama the Messiah. I don't recall the exact words, but the general tone was one of dream coming true, after so long and hard a wait.

What dream? Of course, the one of a person-of-colour as President of the USA. And a rather hardcore tranzist for that matter, because a Republican female-person-of-colour like Condoleeza Rice never was the matter of dreams - even if she reached a position of absolute regard in the administration.

What remains between the lines in those rags is the position that only the election of Barack Obama can mean that America has finally overcome its congenital racism and embraced the light of Changiness, Hopeitude and the Hug of the Whole World.

And the corollary is that the victory of McCain will show that America is still the old racist, capitalist and arrogant behemoth it has always been.

The fact that reasonable, knowledgeable and color-blind people may have rationally decided that Obama wouldn't be a good President of the USA is not allowed to enter the picture. It cannot be, for cognitive dissonance must be kept at bay at any cost.

Nuclear Follies

Imagine - if you might - nuclear-powered missile. With a ramjet and a 600 MW nuclear reactor, the beast zooms at Mach 3 some 200 meters above enemy territory using its radar guidance to follow terrain contours. Its mighty roar alone could kill, but the deadly radiations from its unshielded reactor, and the polluted exhaust, present a much more serious danger. The missile will fly by its list of targets, and lob a megaton-class warhead at each of them delivering enormous destruction.

It sounds like science fiction - maybe from Peter Hamilton in one of his nihilistic moments.

Yet, this project was called SLAM or Pluto, and in fact it reached a quite advanced development stage in the USA during the late 50's and early 60's. This awesome weapon system was intended to be faster than bombers, and especially to have far longer range - in fact, the nuclear reactor gave it nearly unlimited autonomy.

Developing this weapon was particularly challenging, because it required unprecedented performance from all its components, which had to operate in extreme environments due to temperature, radiation flux and mechanical stresses. Many of these components had to be invented from scratch, such as the ceramic fuel elements of the propulsion reactor.

A huge test facility in the Nevada desert was built in order to test the nuclear engines; two of them were in fact built and tested succesfully, the second one at full power. Also the revolutionary terrain contour navigation system was developed specifically for this application; nowadays it is at the core of all cruise missile guidance systems.

The project was eventually terminated in 1964, because ICBMs were faster, less expensive and way harder to intercept. Moreover, the SLAM had massive serious issues, being as much dangerous for friends and foes alike.

Yet, many of the scientists and engineers working on the SLAM remember fondly those years: it was a stimulating and challenging work environment, at the cutting edge of known technology. Ultimately, we have been spared one of the nastiest weapons ever devised, but that project yielded useful technological advencements.

Forget About Brakes

When driving on snowy roads, that is. Brake must be used very carefully and gently; it's better to slow down by shifting into a lower gear. And never ever brake in the middle of a corner (even ABS won't help much).

And a full-time 4x4 reacts different from a front wheel drive car like the ones I have driven for years; things may vary as a result of how torque is spread (some rally cars give more torque to the rear in order to facilitate powerslides) but at least my Daihatsu Terios doesn't tend to swerve when I push on the gas, even on slippery surfaces. But while braking, it's more difficult to control.

So, today I was driving to work on this back road (I didn't want to take it, but I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere) which winds bend after bend up and down the hills at the eastern limit of Parma province. It was snowing and the tarmac was covered by 1 cm or so of heavy, watery snow; my offroad mounts 4-season (if they exist) tyres. I took a bend to the right - not a sharp one and I was doing 40 km/h - and realized to my dismay that I was going straight towards the guard-rail; steering the wheel had no effect at all.

I had resigned myself to get back home with a dented car, when I realized my foot was still on the brake pedal. I released it and behold, front wheels instantly regained grip! They were steered way to the right, so my car immediately turned towards the other side of the road (a earthen cliff beyond the gutter), but I was ready to steer gently to the left, applying no brakes but a little gas, and I was happily back on the road. Not-so-luckily, because not many people drive along bendy country roads when it snows, there was no traffic, or things could have turned out worse. But it took a little while to shake off that adrenaline.

Chemicals Better Left Untouched

In the vast world of chemistry, there are many chamicals that can ruin your day - or your whole life.

But not all chemicals are nasty in the same way: some are toxic, others corrosive. There are chemicals that can detonate more or less on a whim, and others that ignite very easily.

So it's difficult to say what is the Nastiest Substance in the World; the competition should at least be broken into categories. I won't enter into the topic of how easy or difficult it is to achieve protection from the various chemicals, or how likely exposition is, because it would be too long a discussion.

Acute toxicity: Ricin, nerve agents and other toxins are at the top of the list. These cause an array of unpleasant effects that culminate in death, which is rather rapid but not painless. Another piece of work is dimethyl sulphate: it causes blisters on skin and necrosis of eyes and respiratory tract.

Chronic toxicity: Asbestos is pretty bad, in the vicinity of aromatic amines and azoic dyes. They cause various ilnesses, among them types of cancer which are hard to treat. Anything with an aromatic ring has at least the potential to bind to DNA and screw it up; there is a pretty long list of other reactive groups that can possibly cause cancer.

Flammability: Carbon disulphide, with its autoignition temperature of 90 - 100 °C. It presents other reactive hazards and it's toxic, too. Many low molecular weight ethers are extremely flammable as well. Vapors behave as gases, which means that they can travel quite a distance before they reach a remote source of ignition.

Explosion: Organic perchlorate esters are prone to explode if the chemists in the lab have the wrong haircut, but someone embarked on a project to test the limits of divine benevolence and prepared fluorine perchlorate. The stuff is so unstable that it detonates upon crystallization. Ethers, if stored in contact with oxygen, produce unstable peroxydes which have caused many accidents - especially when the young chmistry student applies excessive force to remove a ground glass stopper from a bottle buried for years in the depts of some laboratory cabinet. The infamous explosive TATP belongs to the same category. Though not explosive in themselves, strong oxydizers will easily produce explosions and fires if they come into contact with combustible substances. Liquid oxygen is well-known for that behaviour, and treated with due respect (and those who don't show respect don't live for long). But if liquid oxygen is bad, liquid fluorine is devilish: it is an even stronger oxydizer, and corrodes everything except some fluorinated polymers and some metals, because passivation protects them. It is hypergolic with hydrocarbon fuels and many other substances. But even fluorine can be topped by...

The Nastiest of Them All: Chlorine Trifluoride. Even less domesticated than fluorine, it is extremely reactive and corrosive. It causes everything except passivated metals to ignite and burn - yes, concrete does burn in contact with ClF3, as does flesh. It was investigated as a rocket fuel, but it proved to be too reactive even for that. Its only practical use nowadays is as cleaning agent in chemical vapor deposition chambers for semiconductor production - making it the most extreme cleaning process I'm aware of.
Ah, the stuff is also higly toxic. But it does not cause cancer, hooray!

Laws Of Military Science

A discussion that occurred recently at Winds of Change touched - albeit peripherally - one old issue of military science: what counts more between quality and quantity of enemy armed forces.

The situation is complex because there isn't much of a clear trend in history: sometimes quality triumphed and sometimes quantity did. Usually, a much bigger numerical advantage is required to offset a wider quality gap. If the technological level of the two parties is hugely different, the less adavanced party will stand no chance of victory - unless the other side does something monumentally stupid, or does not want to fight to the end.

A factor that many military geeks tend to overlook is logistics. If one army has vastly superior hardware, but cannot keep the supplies of ammunition, fuel, food - and these days batteries and cells - flowing, it will succumb. This can happen to numerically superior armies too - in fact, a bigger army needs more supplies just to survive, let alone fight. That is one reason that makes keeping a large army deployed without actually fighting sustainable only for a short term.

As a side note, numerical and technological advantage are always relative to the enemy being fought, and especially the numerical advantage is not homogeneous in time and space - meaning, some parts of a vast army may still be outnumbered in certain places and times.

Quality of armed forces also includes the training of soldiers, but this does not impact in any significative way what said above.

There are four elements of warfare, which in order of scale are objectives, logistics, strategy, and tactics; Clausewitz did not discuss logistics in depth in his tome, because in his age logistics was not so determinant for the outcome of a war. The fifth element is morale, and it is by no means a secondary one - in fact, morale is enormously important: an army, any, without the will to fight is useless.

So the conclusion is that the discussion about quality and quantity in itself is pretty much pointless. The outcome of a war is dictated by the imbalance of all elements, and an advantage in one can be nullified or even overturned by a disadvantage in another.

War is one hell of endeavour to undertake in fact. There's no certain, simplistic rule to victory - except sticking to it to the end, whatever it is. That alone is not enough, but without enough morale there can be no victory.

As an aside, I don't think that today's war against radical Islam is "non-Clausewitzian". Sure, it's very different from war as the Master intended it, but Clausewitz's genius was to discover some fundamental elements which are part of all conflicts, including this one.

Format Notice

If I spot mistakes in a post already published, corrections will be made in this brick-red colour. To revive the ancient teacher's tradition of marking errors and mistakes with a red pencil.

Per onorare l'antica tradizione degli inseganti, eventuali errori negli articoli già pubblicati verranno corretti con il colore rosso mattone.

Common Misconceptions

Reading the letters to the editor of my local paper I came across yet another case of a common misconception: that a natural state exists, where there is equilibrium and harmony between all living beings and Nature as a whole.

Bollocks. No such state exists. The real natural state is made of ruthless struggle for survival, brutal hunts, preys eaten alive and predators starving to death if they cannot inflict that brutality on a prey. It is made of untreated wounds and diseases, of no therapy for pain, exposure to all the worst of weather.

Violence is the norm and extinction a common occurrence. And some people think that humans are worse than the whole lot because we want to limit the population of some animals that, among other obnoxious things, weaken levees by digging their lairs? Morons.


Another common misconception regards evolution. A lot of folks think that evolution means going towards higher lifeforms - when humans are involved, they think evolution should go towards better morality. And "better" most often coincides with "more socialist/collectivist".

Bollocks, again. The ugly truth is:

EVOLUTION DOES NOT HAVE ANY GODDAMN THING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH HUMAN NOTIONS OF MORALITY, NO REALLY, NOT A SINGLE THING, IT HAD BEEN GOING ON BILLIONS OF YEARS BEFORE WE CAME ALONG AND CAME UP WITH ANY SUCH NOTIONS.

The main metric in evolution is reproductive success. The more individuals there are in your species, the better - and it does not matter how you reached that point; evolution is a purely amoral force.