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What does it mean to win? Effectiveness vs. Progress
Much of my perspective of military planning and thinking was forged during late-night mission analysis or military decision making process marathons in Korea in 2003. As the S2, or intelligence...
View ArticleOngoing Projects December 2012
Apologies for the delay in posts--I've just started in a new position, and have been running around trying to figure out which end is up. One of the wonderful things about Army work is that as soon as...
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Podcasts and Professors
"Sa-meow-rai"Today, Chris over at the Samurai Archives released a podcast we did discussing the Joint Operating Principles blogpost I did over at the SA blog Shogun Yashiki. Already I've had a few...
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Doctrine 101: What is Doctrine? Part I
Hello, everyone. I hope you are having a happy Holiday season, whichever flavor of winter festivity you participate in.This will be the first post in an ongoing series I've decided to call "Doctrine...
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Doctrine 101: What is Doctrine? Part II
For readers wondering where this discussion of "doctrine" and the US Army fits in with Japanese history...it doesn't. At least, not yet. In any monograph, the author has to set up his observations and...
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Technical Notes
I'm still new to this blogging thing, and figuring out what Blogger can do. A couple of housekeeping notes regarding the site:-- "Widgets", or those little blocks of links, info, etc. on the sides of...
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Gateway Drugs
I'm traveling this week, so the Doctrine 101 posts are on hold for the time being. I'm in Miami to see my Notre Dame Fightin' Irish play Alabama (boo, hiss) for the national championship. However, the...
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Odds and Ends (with a little rant on academic presentations...)
1. So, lesson learned: don't put the word "drugs" into the title of a blog post, or you will receive some really weird traffic. Obviously I was referring to Epcot Center (and cultural museum displays...
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No, I haven't forgotten...
First of all, greetings to all of my new guests. Somehow I got linked from the amusing website "Badass of the Week" and their article on Kôsa Kennyô. All of a sudden my traffic feed seemed to...
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Giving Up the Myths, Part I
Something came up on the way to Tanegashima.Today I will start reviewing a book on Japan's use of firearms. However, it won't be Lidin's book on the introduction of guns by Europeans in 1543. I will...
View ArticleGiving Up the Myths, Part II
Moving into the actual book, we continue our look at Noel Perrin's "Giving up the Gun". My first impressions are here. For the background, etc., read that first and then return here.So, to review what...
View ArticleConferencing Time!
Hello everyone--it's been a pretty busy few weeks at work, and I'm now at Day 1 of the Society for Military History conference. Preparing two papers for that (a paper for the Chinese Military History...
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Conferencing Time Part II
And here's the second paper--again, just copying and pasting at the moment, so ignore any formatting issues. Enjoy, leave feedback, and I'm sure you'll be able to see the differences and some...
View ArticleHisashiburi...
[EDIT: My apologies to anyone coming to this post looking for my video presentation. I've decided that I will be using it as a baseline for a presentation at the AAS conference next year in Chicago,...
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Nagashino III: Return to Shitaragahara!
Hello, everyone. It's your all-too-infrequent author, back from 6ish weeks in Japan, where the Army sent me because speaking Japanese is critical for my job, and amazingly enough I do not get too many...
View ArticleMethodology Madness I
I'm getting ready for another conference in October: “Battlefield Archeology: Global Perspectives on Research and Preservation”, in Palo Alto, Texas. This time, I'm an invited speaker, complete with...
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SPIDERS, SPIDERS, SPIDERS!
Well, %^@#*!!Why is a picture of a closed Lincoln Memorial on a Japanese military history blog?Because the conference I've been prepping for next week is "postponed" for the time being. It's being held...
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The Operational Level of War, from Horseback
Sometimes when you're struggling with a problem, a solution arrives from a source you never would have seen coming.For the last few days I've been working on my presentation for the Palo Alto...
View ArticleHitting the Reset Button
In emails back and forth yesterday with one of the Palo Alto organizers, I found out that the conference is likely to be pushed back to February or later. This isn't a bad thing for me, because I'll be...
View ArticleRest In Peace, Original Nagashino Presentation
I realized that I've never shared my original (though heavily modified over the iterations) presentation on Nagashino, other than the dusty old Youtube version from the Japan Studies Conference. So to...
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