Comments on: An Email Exchange

By: bc

bc — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 17:51:48 +0000

Lex,

Write the book. You CAN do it.

By: lex

lex — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 01:39:31 +0000

Kind words again, Phil, head of the class

I did actually look into writing a book once, about a dozen years, subsequent to a rather nasty spill on my motorcycle, and awarded 30 days of convalescent leave. Nothing but time on my hands, and being who I am, I first bought a book on how to write a book (short version: Write – Long version: Write, and die trying to find a publisher) and went merrily to work.

Before discovering that it’s actually rather hard. Damn hard, actually. Fun thing about the blog though is that I get to practice writing, while both of you useful readers end up being my editors and market survey!

For free!

By: Phil

Phil — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 00:00:45 +0000

Enjoyed most of it? No, I think maybe I enjoyed all of it. Some stuff more than others is all. I check the site every day for new content just like your other loyal reader Ever think of writing a novel ala Tom Clancy? Think you might have the right stuff.

By: lex

lex — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 21:25:13 +0000

Bill – I suspect you’re right in a lot of ways: Rotary-wing combat is more personal than fixed-wing. But I think it’s also generally (although not by any means always) more reactive as well. Fixed wing strikes (apart from CAS and maybe BAI or TST) tend to be more deliberative from planning through execution – you get to know your target’s every feature intimately before ever you see it in the cross-hairs.

B2 – I guess the parallel my occasional correspondent and I are evoking has less to do with the moment of destruction than with the act leading up to it. It is a passion for destruction in other words, rather than a destructive passion.

Thanks for writing, IJ and Jim – pleased to have been of service

By: Jimthepilot

Jimthepilot — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 19:16:31 +0000

Good stuff. Take a read through G.K. Chesterton’s “The Last Hero” for another warrior who knew what it is to love the target to death.

By: badbob

badbob — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 19:05:01 +0000

scratch, scratch….I dunno

re- “Eros when combined with phileo can perhaps make a dialetic synthesis which reaches to the god-like plain of agape, but by itself eros is ignoble and destructive.”

There are no stupid questions, right? But..

Are you making an art out of a science (ballistics) or vice versa? Or are you explaining “be the bull”, “may the force be with you” or “pause-pickle-pull”? Is it that split second as the swinging muzzle reaches the dove?

Which is all sort of funny when you consider that the entire JDAM link to do the above is comprised of SW code written to spec by bespeckled EE’s and CS grads! Digital and clinical! Hard to get target fixation w/JDAM I’ll reckon.