Marine Corps Rules:
01. Be courteous to everyone, friendly to no one.
02. Decide to be aggressive enough, quickly enough.
03. Have a plan.
04. Have a back-up plan, because the first one probably won't work.
05. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet.
06. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun whose caliber does not start with a '4.'
07. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive.
08. Move away from your attacker. Distance is your friend (Lateral & diagonal preferred.)
09. Use cover or concealment as much as possible.
10. Flank your adversary when possible. Protect yours.
11. Always cheat; always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.
12. In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.
13. If you are not shooting, you should be communicating your intention to shoot.
There are various versions of these on the web. But a friend sent me these and they can be easily altered to fit the bureaucratic environment.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
To exist is to have identity; to have identity means one is what one is and one is not what one is not; which means, to have causes and consequences, pain and pleasure, experience and cessation. To exist means to exist within a context. To be defined. To be finite….
Life was matter imbued with meaning; matter aware of itself, and, because of that awareness, aware that it was more than mere matter…aware of the universe…of its identity, its finitude.
John C. Wright, The Golden Transcendence
Life was matter imbued with meaning; matter aware of itself, and, because of that awareness, aware that it was more than mere matter…aware of the universe…of its identity, its finitude.
John C. Wright, The Golden Transcendence
Monday, April 05, 2010
Chaos has killed me....But the victory of unpredictability is hallow. Men imagine, in their pride, that they can predict life's each event, and govern nature and govern each other with rules of unyielding iron. Not so. There will always be men...who will do the things no one else predicts or can control....For men to be civilized, they must be unlike each other, so that when chaos comes to claim them, no two will use what strategy the other does, and thus, even in the middle of blind chaos, some men, by sheer blind chance, if nothing else, will conquer. The way to conquer the chaos which underlies all the illusionary stable things in life, is to be so free, and tolerant, and so much in love with liberty, that chaos itself becomes our ally; we shall become what no one can foresee; and courage and inventiveness will be the names we call our fearless unpredictability.
John C. Wright, The Golden Transcendence
John C. Wright, The Golden Transcendence
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
If someone with a sharp axe
hacks off the boughs of a great oak tree,
and spoils its handsome shape;
although its fruit has failed, yet it can give an account of itself
if it come later to a winter fire
or if it rests on the pillars of some palace
and does a sad task among foreign walls
when there is nothing left in the place it comes from.
Pindar's Fourth Pythian Ode as translated by Bernard Williams
and quoted in Charles Freeman's magisterial Egypt, Greece and Rome
hacks off the boughs of a great oak tree,
and spoils its handsome shape;
although its fruit has failed, yet it can give an account of itself
if it come later to a winter fire
or if it rests on the pillars of some palace
and does a sad task among foreign walls
when there is nothing left in the place it comes from.
Pindar's Fourth Pythian Ode as translated by Bernard Williams
and quoted in Charles Freeman's magisterial Egypt, Greece and Rome
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
After years of waiting nothing came
As your life flashed before your eyes
You realize
I'm a reasonable man
Get off my case
Radiohead, Packt Like Sardines
As your life flashed before your eyes
You realize
I'm a reasonable man
Get off my case
Radiohead, Packt Like Sardines
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
"This shit would be really interesting if we weren't in the middle of it."
Barack Obama, September 2008 (as quoted in Game Change).
Barack Obama, September 2008 (as quoted in Game Change).
Monday, December 07, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Monday, November 09, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
The history of the world is the history of a ten-thousand-year war of brains between the rich and the poor. Each side is eternally trying to hoodwink the other side: and it has been this way since the start of time. The poor win a few battles...but of course the rich have won the war for ten thousand years.
Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
[E]veryone wants to be the center of the universe.
Colin Negrych as quoted by Nick Palmgarten
[A] mortal soul, the non-corporeal essence of ourselves lurking within our flesh...flourishing when we flourish, and dying when we die.
Salman Rushdie, "In the South"
Both in the May 18, 2009 New Yorker.
Colin Negrych as quoted by Nick Palmgarten
[A] mortal soul, the non-corporeal essence of ourselves lurking within our flesh...flourishing when we flourish, and dying when we die.
Salman Rushdie, "In the South"
Both in the May 18, 2009 New Yorker.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Monday, June 01, 2009
The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
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