Greg Sanders

153 billion dollars

2009-11-11T23:32:34-05:00

That's the amount, in 2008 dollars, we've spent on contracts performed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and their theaters since 2001. Check the map for the breakdown. It shouldn't surprise anyone that Iraq has the majority of the spending, Iraq has had many more troops and most of the spending goes to supporting them. It's important to keep in mind that while private security contractors tend to make the most news, they're direct contracts only account for $6 billion of the $153 billion. That said, if you want to account for sub-contracting than you can probably double or triple that figure.

Check back over the next week if you're curious who is spending that money and want details on what they're buying. For those that are impatient, the results are available in this overview newsletter.

Part of my job is to follow and study financial and industrial aspects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. On this veterans day I do want to thank those that have served and also to do my part to help people understand this part of the wars. So, if you've got any I'll do my best to help bridge the civil-military gaps in knowledge.

Ta-Nehisi Coates gets me excited about Dragon Age

2009-11-11T11:00:43-05:00

I've been a bit meh on Bioware's new game Dragon Age despite being a big fan of the company. I think there's two main drivers:

I'm basically sick of conventional western fantasy as a setting.
The marketing has been pretty low key so it hasn't caught my attention aside from some Penny Arcade comics.

I'm really enjoying Avatar: The Last Airbender right now, so I won't go so far as to say I've entirely soured on fantasy, but at this point I tend to see it as a net negative as a setting. There's just so much that's either been done to death or is problematic. I prefer settings that deal with issues that we are presently wrestling with or that are unfamiliar. This is why I want to figure out ways to do more modern settings in DnD. DnD does fantasy well and has some settings that do work for me such as Eberron, Planescape, maybe Spelljammers, our current tabletop game campaign settings.

Anyhow, Coates has one of the best communities for discussing my cultural interests that I've ever seen. I tend to get along well with people that are drawn to his writing and he also puts in the work to maintain it. If you want a place to talk about some of these issues, I really recommend it. I don't actually usually hang out on gaming site boards (with the exception of Brainy Gamer), but if you want to talk about the cultural aspects rather than the mechanical aspects I can't recommend his comment threads highly enough.

Anyways, here's the bit that got me excited about Dragon-Age:

As a fan of Bioware, I've been waiting on Dragon's Age for a long-time now, and it really doesn't disappoint. It reminds me a lot of Oblivion, but better. I think Oblivion offers more options, in terms of customizing, but the game was just too big for me. It felt really lonely, and combat felt non-intuitive. The thing about Dragon's Age is you can actually see people doing cool shit--like ripostes etc.

My one beef with the game is the gore--it's way too much.. But the gore actually makes the game look less mature. It makes it feel like it was built for twelve year olds who want to feel like their doing something forbidden...

Back on story, It felt right to play the descendants of slaves (What can I say? Even when I'm role-playing, I'm hood.), so I picked an elf. I don't want to say too much about the game, but the sequence where you have to storm the castle and save your betrothed is really intense. I'll have more to say as I get further in. But for right now, color me impressed.

Preliminary Droid Review

2009-11-11T00:38:05-05:00

I am generally pleased. There's many lauditory reviews so I'll focus on downsides: 1 Touchscreen buttons sometimes resist triggering and other times go off when brushed over. 2 While the multitasking works great, not all apps seem to qualify, which can be tricky if you lose data when switching away. 3 Battery life drains fast if you run an app in the background. No big surprises and most of these point probably apply to many touch phones. To close on a positive not, I love the power cord, it is a usb cord [and an adaptor that let's you plug a usb dongle into an outlet. It keeps the number of wires down and that plug adaptor might help me charge other apps. The only problem there is that it is quite short. Also, appropriately, this post got prematurely posted due to my brushing the post button, but I'm still happy enough with the phone that I've gone back and finished my praise of the power options.]

Practical review: pixelpipe app for android phones

2009-11-10T08:19:15-05:00

I recently picked up a Motorola Droid, a smart phone that runs Google's android 2.0 os. Much of the functunality for this phone, like the eye phone, comes from downloading apps to log on to irc, check your rss feeds, or in this case post blog entries.

Pixelpipe can handle posts, status updates, and pictures for a myriad of services. So many, really, that they should allow keyboard searches to speed things up. On first use, the interface is a bit inelegant, but at the same time is powerful. In example, it only lets me create a pipe for one typepad blog at a time and creates and extra blog, named after my email, with each add. But it was free and it's easy to work around problems. If this post shows up and looks good, consider this a positive review.

20th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

2009-11-10T00:20:30-05:00

My memories of the fall of the wall, and the people walking and then driving to west Berlin and the like, are not that strong. Oddly enough, I more clearly remember watching on television the coup against Gorbechev, perhaps because I was in [Wales] at the time. However, I do remember caring about it and doing reports on it and making aluminum foil dioramas. My pastor had actually gone to Berlin soon thereafter and gotten me a few pieces of the wall, for which I’m still grateful. My mom actually had visited the divided city, her stories of riding the subway around and seeing the shuttered East Berlin stops and their exposed lightbulbs and single patrolling guard has always stuck with me.

I’ve had a chance to tour the reunited Berlin and loved the experience. That said, some of the East Berlin construction has got to be the ugliest architecture I’ve ever seen, and that includes Communist construction in the PRC.

All in all, I find the steady consolidation of Europe to be one of the most inspiring stories in human history, made all the more remarkable by its peacefulness after such a destructive past. While the EU has a stodgy technocratic reputation, its steady peaceful expansion has far outstripped the 20th century expansion of the U.S. At the same time, I’m quite proud of the role the U.S. played in the reunification of Berlin and Germany as a whole. We put our faith in the peaceful democratic nature of our two-time enemy and that belief has been redeemed.

Condolences to the families of those killed and injured at Fort Hood

2009-11-07T00:55:20-05:00

Wired’s Danger Room does a good job of summarizing many of the details. Beyond that, spending lots of time focusing on crazies seems to inspire other crazies to emulate their methods.

Afghanistan's Future: Colombia? Vietnam? Pakistan? Lebanon? Afghanistan's past?

2009-11-05T15:24:59-05:00

As the administration works to formulate a new strategy for Afghanistan, popular and elite support appears to be dropping off and a string of attacks makes the stakes all too clear.

Dichotomies such as counter-insurgency versus counterterrorism, double down or fold, are useful ways to try to force prioritization rather than allow inertia to set strategy. However, they preclude options that would vary the approach based on the region. Another, still overly simple, way to look at Afghanistan is by comparing possible end states.

Colombia: The U.S. has had mixed success is strengthening the government of Colombia and cracking down on cocaine cultivation. However, mirroring Colombia's achievements would still be a boon to Afghanistan while still being a more realistic end-state than the mountainous and decentralized democracy of Switzerland. Getting to Colombia in the mid-term would likely require a counterinsurgency approach and a substantial increase in resources and improvements in governance.

Vietnam: Joshua Kurlantzick raises Vietnam as a positive model of an end state. Namely after the withdrawal and the fall of South Vietnam, while the country is still authoritarian, the U.S. enjoys a close relationship with that country and the long-feared domino effect never occurred. Whether a successor of the current government or the Taliban is in charge, the question of terrorist havens must be addressed. However, that issues is by no means limited to Afghanistan.

Pakistan: Through the use of Predator drones support by good intel, the U.S. has been quite successful at targeting Al Qaeda leadership without a large scale military presence on the ground. Austin Long discusses how such an approach could be applied in Afghanistan (via Michael Cohen). On the one hand, civilian casualties from drone strike do raise tensions, on the other, many of the civilian deaths from airstrikes were a result of missiles and bombs being used to provide support to U.S. combat troops. The experience in Pakistan shows that these target strikes alone will not defeat the Taliban, but may achieve the narrower objective of crippling Al Qaeda. Implementing this strategy in the short-term should be manageable, but the sustainability, either in Afghanistan or Pakistan, is an open question.

Lebanon: According to Scott Wilson, one train of thought emerging in the Administration is that we attempt to weaken but not destroy the Taliban. The analogy would be Hezbollah, which controls a portion of Lebanon and participates in its government as a minority party. There is a risk that allowing this would destabilize Pakistan, but on the other hand the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban has often been far friendlier than the relationship between Hezbollah and Israel. Such an approach could be population-centric in government strongholds while reserving the counter-terrorism for any Al Qaeda activity in the remainder of the country.

Afghanistan's Past: A way to pursue counter-insurgency with less troops would be to exclusively defend the cities. As Matt Yglesias notes, this approach in some way mirrors the Soviet approach in the latter stages of their occupation, though of course would not seek to emulate many soviet methods. The Soviet approach may be a subset of the Lebanon approach, the difference would be that a cities approach would pick key population centers nation-wide while a more Lebanon-like approach may abandon some larger population centers in Taliban sympathizing territory while protecting smaller but more sympathetic locales.

Successful pursuit of a strategy in a hostile environment typically requires providing a sufficient level of resources and sacrificing desirable objects that are not necessary for success. More ambitious approaches require far more resources which will further tax the U.S. economy. Less ambitious approaches, up to and including withdrawal, will not accomplish everything we would like to see happen in Afghanistan, but may prove the most efficient way to advance U.S. interests and values. As the Status of Forces agreement in Iraq showed, these choices will be further limited by what the local politicians and population will support, but for such a negotiation to be practical we need to first determine what we are shooting for.

While determining the cost in casualties of any of these strategies is quite difficult, the cost in dollars is easier to estimate. So, reader, do you think this is a good starting list? Are there any other end-states to be considered?

This post is also available at ameasureofsecurity.org and Next America.

What are the obstacles to education reform in the Harry Potter universe?

2009-10-31T11:12:24-04:00

Kalinara over at Pretty, Fizzy Paradise raises a point I’ve seen before:

But they take the traits MOST likely to result in evil wizardry (ambition and cunning) and shove ALL of those people together into one House. Doesn't that seem like a recipe for disaster?…

It's like...prison really. In which some poor kid gets thrown in for drug possession or something and comes out with all this knowledge and ability to commit much bigger crimes. Only, you know. The wizard equivalent. You go in a little brat, and come out a Nazi.

And really, isolating most of the really ambitious people together in a system that promotes solidarity-in-ones-group and competition-with-others over anything else, just makes for another mess.

I quite agree. However, I wouldn’t necessarily just trace this idiocy to bad writing. This sort of phenomenon can happen in real life, see the prisons example. The question is, why is it allowed to persist?

Here’s some causes I could see:

Follow the money: Certain influential people find it desirable. The schools are run by the Ministry of Magic, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have endowed chairs or powerful parent associations. It could well be that either Salazar Slytherin himself, parents, or alumni based their financial support (in gold or in magic items) on the maintenance of Slytherin in its present form. Given the close affiliation of the Houses to sporting events, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if much of the fundraising came in through the houses and not to the school directly. Slytherin grads seem to be the richest of the bunch and the first Voldemort uprising wouldn’t have automatically broken this system as many supporters made it through with their fortunes intact.
Slytherin students as a public goods problem: Perhaps the other houses prefer to not deal with Slytherin students. Some of them are ambitious and clever but a good number of others seem to be toady material. Abolishing or reformulating Slytherin would mean other houses taking students they might otherwise prefer to avoid. Any one house wouldn’t want to take the bulk of the more questionable students thus shaking up the system would require coordination of multiple actors and not just one brave reformer.
Legacy systems: The sorting hat apparently includes blood purity as a factor in placing students. If you think upgrading a bureaucracies IT systems is hard, imagine what it would be like if that system really was created by an arcane ritual that was likely only known to its creator. I’d also say that the methods of education at Hogwarts are on the whole terrible, a good cross-house team building class would go a long way to remedying the problem but given that the school doesn’t even have a computer lab I doubt we’ll be seeing that sort of thing any time soon.

On the whole, I tend to think following the money is the most logical explanation. Real reform seems unlikely because the wizarding world is in many ways a larger reflection of Slytherin house. The Prime Minister seems to have less power than the Minister of Magic who seems unaccountable to the wizarding population, let alone the public at large.

The “mudbloods,” those without wizarding parents, are not, as they may appear at first glance, a stand in for the middle class or the population at large. Instead they’re the nouveau riche, all too easily integrating into the system by marrying them into a down-on-their luck old magic family (e.g. Ron and Hermoine. Voldemort’s attempts at revolution are battles within a ruling class and not indicative of a wider societal struggle.

How could reform come to the wizarding world? Spoiling Harry Potter 7 a bit, a goblin ripped off by our heroes would need to realize that the fact that goblins haven’t developed a system of ~~presently~~ [permanently] transferable property rights hasn’t stopped anyone else from implementing such at their expense. Thus, the solution is not fighting old battles to regain lost artifacts but instead the introduction of planned obsolesce.

Mass produce lower grade magical items, the sort that will not be around generations down the line, which in means that it’s no great loss to goblin-kind when they aren’t returned upon the death of a wizard. This mass production could in turn lead to the rise of a wizarding middle class, those who lack magical talent but who could achieve great productivity benefits via clever uses of weak magical items. Until such a class developed, there’s no popular basis for reform and as the epilogue of Harry Potter 7 showed we certainly can’t count on the heroic elite.

Review: Where the Wild Things Are

2009-10-25T22:01:20-04:00

I remember the pictures from the book more than I remember the story, so obviously I’m not a purist. In event, I thought the adaptation was great but at the same time is certainly not for all kids. That said, I know little about child development, so find some other reviewer if you need specific tips on if this is right for your kid.

There are rather scary bits as well as a heavy dose of psychological realism combined with troubled personality types. The sugar that helps the dark parts go down is first and foremost appropriate absurdities of childhood combined with Max’s storytelling ability, Jim Henson studios created monsters, and to a lesser extent the neat backdrops.

My one sentence summary would be to take the comic strip Peanuts but merge the real life adults personality-types with the fantasies of the Snoopy oriented strips. Thus, the joy of childhood oriented trailer is fairly deceptive though cool in its own right.

I’d say catching it in theaters is probably most important for muppet monsters/Dark Crystal fans. If you care less about that sort of thing, it’s probably okay to catch it on DVD.

Up from comments: Persona in 4e

2009-10-22T23:44:07-04:00

My friend Todd Harper had raised an interesting point in comments a bit back, one that was reinforced when I listened to an old Brainy Gamer podcast that discussed Persona 3. Michael Abbott was a big fan of Persona 3, I haven’t played it but I quite like the sequel, and mentioned how it’s choice to eschew realism was refreshing. This makes me wonder if I’m showing a poverty of imagination to want to implement guns in 4e. I still think it’s a worthwhile project to put a light amount of work into, but in some ways Todd’s idea is more interesting. As a bit of background, in Persona 3 and 4 (and probably earlier games) each character has a “persona” that is attached to them and has a combat powers set. The main character multiple personas, can get more from combat, and can fuse them to make more powerful personas. That out of the way, here’s the comment:

Random thing that may or may not be to your taste: I know an idea I bounced around for a bit, and which other friends I know took and developed quite a bit more for their own use, was a modern game with a Persona theme. You simply used the basic classes and for the most part, your powers and class features were a function of the Persona you were using.

If you're fighting monsters instead of primarily other people, I think the MODERN = GUNS AKIMBO thing is a little less necessary; you can run in and swing your short sword at whatever all day if it's a shambling monstrosity with six legs and a face that's nothing but a set of giant Angelina Jolie lips.

Plus if you want to have someone like Jin from P3 (who used grenades), you can adapt alchemic items from stuff like Adventurer's Vault and either up the damage or tweak the effects.

You know, now that I think about it, there's another advantage here: in the current 4e game I was in, I started as a sorcerer but switched characters midway through (because with two other meleers, as a Dragonsorc all my powers were useless since they were constantly in the way). But if you have a character switch a Persona, they can effectively try a new class or build with a relatively plausible in-game explanation.

This makes sense to me. I’d earlier commented to some friends that in some ways a main character in the Persona games was a meta-rpger with a stable of characters. The question raised by such a proposal is how to handle skills. In Persona the protagonists skills/attributes completely distinct from the combat power-sets. Social links are used to build more powerful combat options, but that link also goes one way. Some sort of dual-world system, a la Persona, may work well to both play off the combat strengths of DnD while at the same time having a less violence driven storyline. The DnD approach would necessarily be different than the Persona console RPG approach, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t good ideas worth stealing.