Miasma in the House of Bite Me
Grassroots journalism & current events, cyberculture, technology, privacy, with a little new criticism, feminism, postmodernism, radical pedagogy, & new media theory thrown in.
Tough Talking for Marines in Iraq. During Gulf War II, U.S. military planners talked with pride about a seamless communications network linking troops together. However, a recent study of Marines in Iraq paints a less than rosy picture. By Noah Shachtman. [Wired News]
The question had really dogged me after reading the print article in the latest Wired magazine. It is good to see another take on it here on the Wired News site. Also glad to see somebody get their money's worth out of those damn embedded reporters.
During Gulf War II, members of the force often had to use a helmet headset, four radios and two laptops at once to communicate with their comrades and commanders -- all while crammed into light armored vehicles crawling across the Mesopotamian desert.
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The primary finding, according to the field report (PDF) by Marine Corps Systems Command: "Marines were overwhelmed with the high number of varied communications equipment they were expected to use."
During the war, U.S. chieftains and military analysts talked with wide-eyed wonder about how quick and how perfectly seamless communications between U.S. troops had become. In a matter of minutes, they crowed, a tip about Saddam Hussein's location became an assault on a Baghdad restaurant.
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"They had a communication system for every eventuality, and for every issue," said Patrick Garrett, an analyst with the defense think tank Globalsecurity.org. "But they really didn't integrate them all together."
Take, for instance, a Marine riding aboard a light armored vehicle. According to the field report, he'd use a headset to talk on the intercom to his buddies inside the vehicle. When his squad leader called, the Marine would have to remove his helmet and grab a hand-held radio to chat. To speak to a group of Marines nearby, he'd have to grab another radio. And to rap with the Navy SEALs, he'd need yet another radio. He would manage all this while keeping an eye on two different laptops showing the positions of friendly and hostile forces.
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"I personally saw that every 'shelf' was taken up by a radio and seat space and floor spaces were taken up with open computers," the report's anonymous author said.
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The problem may be more about logistics than technology, however. Any single system to talk or share information would have worked fine. But "units never seemed to receive enough of one communications asset, forcing them to rely on a 'hodgepodge' of assets," according to the report.
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To share text messages and digital files, one unit of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force would have the Blue Force Tracker communications system. Another would have the MDACT (Mobile Data Automated Communications Terminal) program. The two have the same functions, essentially. But they can't talk to each other. So when the Marines sent reconnaissance photos to their commanders, they often would use a courier with a Memorex hard drive to carry the pictures by hand to headquarters.
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Satellite-based systems, on the other hand, don't have such limitations. Rather than send their signals directly, these systems bounce them off of "birds" in space. As the war progressed, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force increasingly turned to Iridium satellite phones to talk. They also used Blue Force Tracker for text messaging and positioning information. They were the "only consistently reliable means of communication," according to the report.
THE Segway Human Transporter, a high-tech scooter, already has a little place in history [~] as a marketing phenomenon, an Andy Warhol product of fleeting fame. For a few weeks, starting in December 2001, the Segway and its creator, Dean Kamen, were celebrities.
The man and his machine did turns on "The Tonight Show" and other television programs. They were the subject of lengthy magazine articles and countless newspaper reports.
Mr. Kamen and his backers said the machine would change the world by transforming urban transportation over the next decade or so. Its impact, they said, is likely to rival that of the personal computer. Think of the traditional automobile as a mainframe computer, went the seductive theory, and the Segway as the transportation equivalent of the personal computer.
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In "Code Name Ginger: The Story Behind Segway and Dean Kamen's Quest to Invent a New World" (Harvard Business School Press, $27.95), Steve Kemper explains what the fuss was about.
The Segway is a very cool machine [~] an inventive combination of advanced gyroscopic technology, electronics, software and mechanics. Powered by electricity, it is controlled by the standing rider leaning forward or backward, and tugging left or right on the handlebars.
But it costs about $5,000, and its practical value to most people is, well, less than obvious.
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Mr. Kemper, a freelance journalist, was offered an open door by Mr. Kamen to witness the secret Segway project in Manchester, N.H. The author was expelled late in the project after his book proposal was leaked to the news media. Yet Mr. Kemper used his access well to write a fascinating account of the messy process of invention and bringing an innovative product to the marketplace.
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The book's great strength, however, is its deft depiction of the craft of engineering, and the engineering mentality. I would have preferred a deeper look at the animating technology behind the Segway and its lineage, and a few drawings to help visualize the technology. But Mr. Kemper excels in describing the engineers and their passion for the job. "Engineers love parts the way chefs love ingredients," he writes.
The superengineer behind Segway is Mr. Kamen. He emerges, in Mr. Kemper's rendering, as a complex and contradictory character, brilliant, passionate, focused and profoundly insular. Movies, novels, sports and newspapers hold no interest for him. "My hobby is thinking," he tells people. He lives in a 32,000-square-foot hilltop house on a 38-acre estate.
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His closest employees find working for Mr. Kamen exhilarating but often exasperating, as he throws out ideas and changes plans and designs. "Deaned" is a verb at his company. Management, clearly, is not his life's calling.
FindLaw.com's Legal Commentary: By John W. Dean, Friday June 6, 2003
President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a Joint Resolution authorizing the use of American military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake - acts of war against another nation.
Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet, and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) go away - unless, perhaps, they start another war.
That seems unlikely. Until the questions surrounding the Iraqi war are answered, Congress and the public may strongly resist more of President Bush's warmaking.
Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it. President Lyndon Johnson's distortions of the truth about Vietnam forced him to stand down from reelection. President Richard Nixon's false statements about Watergate forced his resignation.
Frankly, I hope the WMDs are found, for it will end the matter. Clearly, the story of the missing WMDs is far from over. And it is too early, of course, to draw conclusions. But it is not too early to explore the relevant issues.
The Karma of Literature... BookCrossing.com