I’ve got a piece in today’s Boston Globe that takes a kind of odd look at why Trump’s dalliance with destroying NATO was so pernicious.
Basically, I look at what goes into making an alliance or any complex collaboration function. Spoiler alert: it’s not the armchair strategist focus on troop numbers or budget levels. It is, rather, the infrastructure, in its material and especially social forms that determine whether joint shared action can succeed.
To get there I leap from the story of something as basic as agreeing on one common cartridge to be used across the alliance to an anecdote from the early days of the scientific revolution, when John Locke (yup, that Locke) left his borrowed rooms in a house in Essex to check the readings from the little weather station he’d set up at the suggestion of Robert Hooke.
A sample:
While this first step toward the standardization of the tools of science was a milestone, it took the development of a common process — shared habits, ways of working — to truly transform the eager curiosity of the 17th and 18th centuries into a revolutionary new approach to knowledge, the one we now call science. In 1705, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society published an article by the philosopher John Locke. It was a modest work, just a weather diary: a series of daily observations of temperature, barometric pressure, precipitation, cloud cover. He was a careful observer, working with the best available instruments, a set built by Tompion himself. On Sunday, Dec. 13, 1691, for example, Locke left his rooms just before 9 a.m. The temperature was 3.4 on Tompion’s scale — a little chilly, but not a hard frost. Atmospheric pressure had dropped slightly compared to the day before, 30 inches of mercury compared to 30.04. There was a mild east wind, 1 on Locke’s improvised scale, enough to “just move the leaves.” The cloud cover was thick and unbroken — which is to say it was an entirely unsurprising December day in the east of England: dull, damp, and raw.
The reasoning does, I think, more or less come together — and you might enjoy reading such a convoluted bit of historical argument.
In any event, posting this here lets me think thank our own Adam Silverman, who talked through some of the ideas with me and gave me other valuable help. Any errors you might find within the piece are all mine.
Image: Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Nagamaya Yaichi Ducking Bullets, 1878.
Major Major Major Major
I’ll definitely give it a read, thanks! But I just wanted to say first that the title of this post sounds like a murder mystery.
Mike J
@Major Major Major Major: Reminded me of something else.
Josie
I’m guessing that in the last paragraph, you meant to type “thank” rather than “think.”
Librarian
@Major Major Major Major: It was left in a mayonnaise jar on Funk & Wagnalls’ porch since noon today.
The Dangerman
Can one of the Trumpers profit from NATO? Seems to be his only real interest.
efgoldman
Feral children at least have the excuse of being actual children.
efgoldman
@The Dangerman:
In order to maintain the status quo, each country agrees to a hotel in the Capitol, usually with a view of some famous and inviolable national symbol or monument, and a golf course in the suburbs.
Cheap at twice the price
The Dangerman
@efgoldman:
No markup if the showers are golden.
MomSense
I’ll go take a look! I am now celebrating Macron’s victory with a nice glass of wine and a gorgeous salade Nicoise before heading home.
I was waiting in line for the cashier at Banana Republic when I checked here and saw the good news. I let out a cheer and then had to explain. The young guys behind the counter were so excited they gave me an extra discount!
I’m watching the celebrations and so full of joy.
Liberte Egalite Fraternite!
Adam L Silverman
NATO isn’t joint action, it is multinational. The phrase is Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental, Multinational (JIIM). We refer to the JIIM environment at the high operations, theater strategic, national strategic, and geostrategic levels of operations. The first three refer to the US only:
Joint: 2 or more of the US’s uniformed services
Interagency: done through the Interagency process as coordinated by the National Security Staff
Intergovernmental: involving 2 or more US governmental departments, agencies, bureaus, and/or offices
Multinational: involving the US and at least one other nation-state
Major Major Major Major
@Mike J: psychic murder mystery, then.
Oatler.
For want of a nail-
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
Know it all !!
Then again that’s why we love you ; )
MomSense
@hovercraft:
So true. We have more than our top 10,000 blog status share of brainiacs: Silverman, Anderson, and Levenson.
Tom Levenson
@Josie: Indeed I did. Thanks.
Tom Levenson
@Adam L Silverman: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I used the word in its colloquial sense, more or less blissfully unaware of its precise military meaning. So, as above, reworked it is.
And thanks again for your help on this piece.
sharl
I’ll definitely take a look at this; thoughtful examinations of our foundational institutions are too few and far between.
In fact, I’ve kind of thought that nationally we are long overdue for “Course 101”-level discussions of the purpose and modern need (or lack of same) of a number of our various institutions of foreign policy, national security/intelligence, and military. Domestically oriented institutions tend to be more self-explanatory, I think, though the constant beating up of some functions (e.g., environmental protection, tax collection) deserves stronger responses.
People working in those foreign interest-oriented institutions should welcome the chance to provide root explanations to “just regular folk” about how their work helps the “average citizen” (whatever that is), rather than leaving the default appearance that they are organelles in a distant, powerful, and occasionally dangerous blob that sometimes seems to be simultaneously everywhere and nowhere.
Of course, none of this will happen with the current bunch in charge. But the damage I expect them to do to these institutions – some of which has already started – makes this kind of refresher educational work more compelling IMO.
gbear
The keyboard player in Spirit? I loved that band.
swiftfox
@MomSense: Those three make it worth the trip.
Tom Levenson
@gbear: ;-)
Mike J
Chet Murthy
Tom, thank you for the triple metaphor in the linked-to article. Lovely. Just lovely.
Another Scott
It’s a good piece, Tom. Thanks for sharing it.
The idea of, and importance of, standards and methods holds in just about every aspect of life. Even things like money and weights and measures. Supposedly one of the reasons for the growth of Rome in the 4th century BC was the introduction of convenient standard coinage so people knew what they were getting when they traded with it.
It takes a long time to build up a system of standards and ways of doing things. There almost always very good reasons why those standards and systems are in place, and years or decades of work by experts in making it a reality. Trump (and Bannon’s, and LePen’s, and Dutete’s, and Erdogan’s, and …) desire to “renegotiate” everything is far more likely to end up breaking important systems than making thing better. Especially when they present nothing concrete to take the place of existing systems. “Trust me” isn’t something that anyone should accept these days.
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Scott.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott:
Should have used Bitcoin.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
And now Cheryl Rofer, too.
I mean, Betty Cracker and Anne Laurie are both really smart, and JGC’s got his own thing going, but Cheryl is an honest-to-god rocket scientist.
dm
(Sean Maloney, (D) Congressmember from NY18.
He’s also offered to go hold town-halls for Republican Congressmembers.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
Yes!! And of course Betty is the cleverest and Anne Laurie is the heart and soul.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: You forgot DougJ, he is a mathematician IRL.
Mnemosyne
I would get more done on the weekends if Charlotte didn’t decide that I am a self-heated cat bed set up just to keep her warm. And there are few things more difficult than pushing a contented purring cat off your lap.
dmsilev
@dm: What a great idea; I hope he does it. “Because your a Republican Cingressman is too afraid of actual voters to show up, I’ll do it for him and answer the questions he won’t.”
Betty Cracker
Great article and excellent points. I’ve thought at various times since the Berlin Wall fell that NATO didn’t make a lot of sense anymore. Entangling alliances and all. But as you point out, collaboration in one sphere reaps benefits in others.
My hubby was in the USAF during the Reagan era. He had a tough hitch — he was in the USAF band and played piano at fancy NATO cocktail parties in the Rothschild mansion in Paris, keyboard with the rock band at air bases in Turkey, town festivals in Greece, Spain, Portugal, etc. (He tells me Human League covers were wildly popular and radar sites went apeshit for “Radar Love.”)
It was about establishing relationships, cooperating across all sorts of endeavors. That’s a valuable thing beyond the military aspects.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
Yeah, but here he mostly plays the master troll.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: DougJ wears his scholarship lightly and doesn’t take himself too seriously. Many academics do the opposite.
Betty Cracker
@MomSense: Find me another blog with a chicken wrangler-butter lamb sculptor-wine foil artist!
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
Hey how was your trip? Sounded lovely. I’m a big fan of train travel.
I finally talked to a publisher about one of my stories. She really liked it. Now I just have to find the time and confidence to write it.
Ugh.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Turned nature photographer.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
I got a really good Kindle book that I’m recommending to everyone right now called 2K to 10K. She’s a huge believer in doing outlines even if you don’t think of yourself as an outliner, because it prevents you from getting stuck and quitting halfway through the writing. She was convincing enough to get me to do that all-day train trip to work on my outline. Last I checked, the Kindle version was under $5 and well worth the money!
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh, I don’t dislike Doug, but you have to admit, he has a schtick.
Speaking of kitties who bite while you’re trying to type, if Charlotte is laying on me, she’ll nip at my inner arms when I try to type on the iPad.
? ?? Goku ? ?
@dm: Watched him on Maddow. Very presentable yet trolling Faso in a very subtle, polite way
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: Bosscat goes for the finger tips or knuckles. Charlotte sounds like his soul sister.
DougJ does have a schtick, I cannot disagree.
Chet Murthy
@Betty Cracker: Two stories:
(1) Remember the Japanese 5th Generation project (80s project to leapfrog the US using …. wait for it … PROLOG!) The scuttlebutt in the 90s was, it was all just a ruse — the real goal was to train a generation of Japanese computer scientists and programmers to world standards. It worked.
(2) In the early 90s, I worked in Europe, in a consortium funded by an EU “Basic Research Action”. The rules pretty much required many labs in many countries. And many meetings. Our joke was, it was all about getting enough young educated folks to meet over and over in nice settings (Swedish Riviera? Cote d’Azur? Tuscany?) so that eventually they’d all get married and have kids. Get the educated to start thinking of themselves as European and not about their respective nations.
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
Cartoonist, and author of the most amusing monikers for our erstwhile resident of the White House.
@MomSense:
Not to mention our blog host who allows us all to live through his many mishaps, where else do you get nekked mopping, adventures with animal shit and mysteriously disappearing mustard? Throw in the “what not to say” to your lady friend and we’re talking an all purpose blog.
That’s with out mentioning the recipes, on the road and Doug’s trolling and music!
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
Also, the train itself was very nice, though i was glad that Ruemara advised me to get some Gin-Gins candies for the trip. I got the 30 percent ginger “traveler’s candy” and had a lot fewer issues with queasiness.
Once I have some time to sort through them, I’m going to send some of the pictures I took from the train window to Alain. Even the overland stretch from Lompoc to San Luis Obispo was pretty nice since there are a lot of golden rolling hills and vineyards.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
Charlotte definitely wants to be the boss around here … until something scary happens, when she’s all like, Annie, you go see what that weird noise was — I’ll wait here!
But she’s also very snuggly and talkative and playful, which makes up for it. And now she’s realized that I’m typing and is trying to nip my fingers to make me stop. ?
ETA: And I’m still working on my idea for an author blog, but I want to get further ahead on my novel before I start a new project.
Jake Nelson
It’s a nice piece! I wish I weren’t so distracted by the inaccurate numbers in the opening sentence. It’s a technical quibble, not important to the content, but I’d expect it to have been caught…
The cartridge is 57.4mm long overall. (The bullet itself is only 12.7mm, but I assume you mean the cartridge throughout.) The “5.56” number it’s usually referred to by is the 5.56mm width of the rifle barrel it’s fired from. The 5.7mm diameter is at the back end of the bullet- “business end” usually means the front (which is a point), if you want to use the archaic sense meaning the back end, the cartridge’s rim diameter of 9.6mm would be the one…
Sorry, it was just, as I said, distracting. (I’ve done too much data entry for ballistic physics modeling, can you tell?)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@hovercraft: You left out the Subaru in the farmer’s field.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: She subtracted him.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
Ooh. Good tip. I probably need to get a med check and talk to my therapist. The struggle with self esteem is real!
MomSense
@hovercraft:
It’s so good isn’t it!
Adam L Silverman
@Jake Nelson: Nope, no one noticed…
Backs away slowly, gets the calipers, starts measuring his training ammo…
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
We hate the gun fetishists/accuracy nuts here. We don’t have to know the details about the death gadgets to discuss them!
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
Gotta watch out for that ADHD-related dysthymia that sneaks up on you when another new coping strategy doesn’t work, or doesn’t work as well as you hoped.
I’m still trying to get comfortable with the notion that I can half-ass things as long as I finish them (or do them consistently). Even a half-assed outline that’s actually complete will serve me better than the perfect one in my head that I never actually finish. Just doing 15 minutes of weight training every other day helped a lot with my neck pain, but I let myself get stressed about how much more I would need to do in the future and psyched myself out.
Mnemosyne
@Jake Nelson:
@MomSense:
Nah, Jake’s cool — he presented it as great article with good points, but your measurements and caluculations are a bit off, so here’s the corrected version and not hur-durr, you said “clip” instead of “magazine” so I know I never have to pay attention to you.
raven
@MomSense: We who?
Tom Levenson
@Adam L Silverman: Yikes. I was pulling the numbers of the official spec sheet. If I got ’em wrong it’s all me…..
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: Check your bloggy email.
Tom Levenson
@MomSense: @Mnemosyne: Yup. I was the one who chose to present specific details to set off the piece. If I’m going to use a number it’s my job to get it right. Will correct when my editors and I speak tomorrow.
MomSense
@raven:
Ok not you but Mnem and some of the other women here who have been scolded for inaccuracy.
But we all agree on Fuck LBJ!
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: Poor DougJ! His new persona of centrist Bess is quite the performance art!
LurkerNoLonger
John Locke, A Thermometer, A Bullet, And What Gets Lost When Feral Children Break Things Is the set up to a long lost, esoteric Carnac bit.
raven
@MomSense: I don’t think anyone needs to be scolded except idiots like Tweety who claim to be ex-police officers and don’t know shit from shinola.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
I love to sabotage myself by procrastinating until there is no possible way I can do my best work. Procrastination is not a good way to cope with overwhelming perfectionism.
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: Unfortunately it is important for folks like Tom to get these details right when writing about them because there is a significant segment of folks that will summarily discount anyone who gets them wrong. Even when some of the details/terminology is in question, such as magazine verses clip as opposed to stripper clip. Or suppressor versus silencer.
Adam L Silverman
@Tom Levenson: You got the numbers right. As Jake indicated your numbers were correct. He was explaining that the ones you included however were referring to different parts of the bullet and/or cartridge. You did just fine.
Jake Nelson
@Tom Levenson: I doubt many people other than gun nuts and people like me who’ve spent too much time with the numbers would notice, it was just, as I said, distracting, when otherwise it was a nice setup for the piece. Still rolling substantial response around in my head- I’ve been thinking about standards even more than usual lately (and my usual is A LOT), mostly w/r/t the ongoing unforeseen side-effects of containerization, but also stuff like how Brexit will affect the EU’s still-new-and-unsteady standards-setting dominance.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: He brings it on himself.
Jake Nelson
@Adam L Silverman: I imagine certain types will still have issues about interchangeable use of cartridge vs bullet, but I didn’t mention that, because I consider that to be magazine/clip pedantry territory when speaking in general.
raven
@Jake Nelson: round
Adam L Silverman
@Jake Nelson: I’m aware. For full disclosure: Tom asked me to read it. If he messed this up, as the outside, informed/knowledgable proof reader he asked to check this stuff it is on me, not him. I wasn’t going to mention that I’d consulted on this, as it is Tom’s piece from conception to completion, but he asked for my expertise and if I missed this bit, that’s not his fault, except for trusting me.
Jake Nelson
@raven: Ah, yes, that’s generally a safe one. Sometimes, I feel like technical terms have their own version of the “euphemism treadmill”, especially with the use of metonymy…
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
I’ll check when I can — I sat down on the edge of the bed to put my socks on, and Charlotte plopped herself and her very long claws back in my lap. And, of course, I’m on the one device without that email set up.
Sigh. Cats. Possessive, adorable little monsters.
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
I fully admit that I don’t give a crap about guns or bullet sizes, etc. It is one area of my life where I have ceased being tolerant. In my defense, I’ve been stalked and harassed by gun ferishists IRL who actually came to my home, and engaged in other menacing actions, with loaded weapons. Local LEO were zero help.
Jake Nelson
@Adam L Silverman: I had to pull up my charts to check, it was just a brain-tickle set off by 5.56 in relation to length that made me look… and frankly, now you have me worried that I’M looking at the wrong bit of the charts, though I’d hope not, we used those 3d models commercially, and I’d be really embarrassed.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
And yet we all do it anyway. Ugh.
To make it even more complicated, trying to reward myself actually backfires because of the way my parents tried to do it. I may have to go all the way back to rewarding myself the very second I do something I should, like a six-year-old, and trying to build my delayed gratification muscle up from there.
Lurking Canadian
@Mike J: Sounds to me like somebody who has NFLTG. Good for her.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: Square.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
@Mnemosyne:
I’m right there with you. I never got the reward for doing something well, only disapproval for not being perfect. My childhood was literally coming home pleased with my test score of 99 and being asked which question I got wrong.
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: I understand your position and am not trying to make an argument one way or the other. Even when I did that “here’s my professional advice since several of you asked about a personal security thread”, you’ll recall I was ambivalent about firearms for personal protection.
I am sorry your local law enforcement was useless. There is nothing worse than needing them, having them show up, and coming away thinking: “that was pointless”.
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat:
As long as he doesn’t say AN historian….
Adam L Silverman
@Jake Nelson: Bullet diameter should be 5.70 mm/.224 inches.
KS in MA
Great article, Tom. Thanks!
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
My parents went a slightly different direction with a carrot-and-stick approach: every potential reward came with a matching potential punishment. Which might have worked fine for a non-ADHD kid like my older brother, but made me opt out of the game entirely.
Though, as I’ve said before, I am retroactively grateful that my parents gave up on corporal punishment early on when they realized it wasn’t having a good effect on either me or them. I’ve seen some horror stories from ADHD adults whose parents weren’t as smart as mine. I got a couple of bops on the head when I was a particularly sarcastic teenager, but no spankings after about 4 or 5.
Betty Cracker
@MomSense: I share your irritation with weapon pedantry. Pedantry in general grates my last goddamn nerve, but weapon pedantry is especially annoying.
Jake Nelson
@Adam L Silverman: Do you mean that as confirmation or correction? That’s what I said in my first post… though looking at it again, I phrased it a little confusingly.
Millard Filmore
@dm:
I am a nobody and ignorant in the ways of politics, but Maloney could make a national name for himself going down this path.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steve in the ATL:
He won’t. DougJ is a honourable man.
Adam L Silverman
@Jake Nelson: That’s what it should be. I just checked it.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Gah!
Jake Nelson
@MomSense: Apologize for the amount of technical detail brought into the thread. My OCD is usually well-controlled, but through training, not treatment (there’s a lengthy post or two on insurance threads about why), so it’s always a struggle to walk the line between “helpful correction” and “irritating pedantry”. Perfectionism from both neurology and upbringing (“gifted” programs in schools are too often a special form of hell, rather than support) complicates it further.
I’ve had my own poor experiences with the gun-fetishist crowd, and I apologize for bringing it in. Just didn’t want to leave an error out there for unfriendly types to seize on.
(Very self-conscious about taking up too much of the thread now…)
boatboy_srq
When you disdain science, disdain for the scientific method – wherever it is applied – follows [un]naturally. It’s no wonder tRunp doesn’t value NATO (given the context the Globe applies) when he’s part of a movement that doesn’t value science in the first place.
Makes you wonder, though, what (for example) all those ammosexuals would do without Big Gummint to tell gun manufacturers what dimensions to use for barrels and bullets and such. The muzzle-loading, minie-ball-firing musket is a lot closer to their reality than their Galtian ideals would lead them to believe.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
?
Tom Levenson
@Adam L Silverman: Phew.
Cheryl Rofer
Tom and Adam: I find this among the tabs I’m trying to work through.
I’m not able to read Tom’s article in the Boston Globe*, but I’m surmising it’s about how things are tied together in our modern world by the many agreements we’ve made. Dropping one part of one can begin to break up the entire system. Notice that last sentence – all actors’ concerns were addressed. So it’s another example.
* Looks like I’ve used up my quota of articles for the month, although I try to be careful about that, and it’s only the 7th.
Tom Levenson
@Jake Nelson: I went into that w. eyes open. (As in, Adam warned me about not doing that.) I left the opening “bullet” in there, because I wanted the most readers possible to get it. I then used “cartridge” and, I think, “round” in the body of the piece as a signal that I knew the difference between the colloquial and the term-of-art.
That was, in other words, an writer’s choice (passed through my shooter-editor, who concurred). No one in the comment thread at the piece has complained about that yet, though one person was sad that I was referencing a bullet that couldn’t put down a 300 lb hog (or so he claimed).
Tom Levenson
@Adam L Silverman: Nope. Not even a little. The responsibility for everything in print under my name is mine. And as noted above, the cartridge/bullet thing was an explicit writing decision on my part, having been told by Adam of the strong views on the distinction w/in the community of those who use cartridges.
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne: I know what you’re trying to do, but your Canadian spelling doesn’t bother me!
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: @Tom Levenson: There is enough blame to go around. Personally, I blame Obama.
Tom Levenson
@Omnes Omnibus: Well yeah. Of course.
Jake Nelson
@Tom Levenson: Yeah, like I said (or tried to), your uses of bullet/cartridge/round are totally fine and appropriate for the piece, and only a very specific sort of insufferable person might complain (I’m just used to that type showing up).
And yeah, guys like my dad will complain horribly about using 5.56 as a good example, because they hate it so very much (for a mix of rational and irrational reasons), but there’s no pleasing everyone.
ETA: Come to think of it, “For a mix of rational and irrational reasons, there’s no pleasing everyone.” is probably a pretty good statement about standards in general.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steve in the ATL:
Heh. I actually typed it with USAmerican spelling, but for reasons, my keyboard defaults to Canadian English, and I usually don’t bother to override.
gene108
@MomSense:
When I was in out-patient counseling, it was pointed out procrastination is just a way to cope with nervous, anxious, energy and you just put things off till the nerves calm down.
First time I heard that procrastination was not a bad thing. Helped me immensely in accepting myself.
sharl
@Cheryl Rofer:
This may not work for you or others, but I can usually get around that monthly quota by using a second browser. In my case, I primarily use Chrome, with MS Edge as a secondary browser. (I assume Firefox, MSIE, and others would also work this way…)
I hit on this via trial-and-error, and never looked at why it works, but I assume it has something to do with the mechanisms of dynamic IP-assigning, which – I’m guessing – assigns different IP numbers to the different browser apps I have open.
ETA: Forgot to say – I right-click on a URL link (in the browser where I’ve exhausted my quota), then in the resulting drop-down menu left click on “copy link address” (or whatever), then open a tab in the other browser, paste that link into the URL window, and open up the page.
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
That’s why, when G was complaining this morning that he was procrastinating on a paper that’s due on Tuesday, I suggested that he go for a quick 30-minute walk, or at least do some jumping jacks and push-ups. Try to work the nervous energy out another way and see if that helps relieve the anxiety. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s a helpful tool when I remember to use it.
Millard Filmore
@sharl:
For personal computers, you only have one IP, usually assigned by your ISP. I am guessing the multiple browser things works because each one has its own set of cookies (aka drippings on the disk).
sharl
@Millard Filmore: Ah, thanks; that makes sense. Just glad it works, by whatever mechanism. And it worked for Tom’s link here as well.*
*Tom’s link is showing up in my Chrome as it apparently did for Cheryl: I’m informed I’ve maxxed out on my quota. Hmm, I don’t recall clicking on Boston Globe links hardly ever, but I don’t track it, so could be I suppose. Anyhoo, I was able to access the article via MS Edge.
MomSense
@Jake Nelson:
Don’t apologize. It’s ok. I just think technicalities often derail conversations about gun safety. I don’t think you or Adam were doing that at all.
Adam L Silverman
@Jake Nelson:
And then the murders began…
Marshall Eubanks
People may not be aware of just how much Robert Hooke’s vision of meteorological data collection has also grown and matured. Essential to weather forecasting, for example, are the twice daily launches of weather balloons – at a uniform time, 0 and 12 hours UTC, and with data rapidly reported to the WMO. Take a look at the maps in this website, and note that North and South Korea, India and Pakistan, the US and Iran, all collect these data in the same way, at the same time, and share it for the same purpose. Everyone likes better weather forecasts and this is just a fraction of the weather data collected all over the world every day – an achievement that in many ways I think is more profound than the organization of NATO.