Find your inner Boyd.

Everyone should have their own Boyd page.

The Full Boyd

Boyd.

Boyd.

Still here?

Boyd.

Brilliant. A trippy 5.5 minutes of the cube nailing it. Brilliant, again.

This party is old and uninviting
Participants all in black and white
You enter in fullblown technicolor
Nothing is the same after tonight

If the world would fall apart
In a fiction worthy wind
I wouldn’t change a thing
Now that you’re here

Yeah, love is a verb here in my room
Here in my room, here in my room

You enter and close the door behind you
Now show me the world as seen from the stars
If only the lights would dim a little
I’m weary of eyes upon my scars

Pink tractor beam into your incision
Head spinning as free as dervishs’ whirl
I came here expecting next to nothing
So thank you for being that kind of girl
That kind of girl

Rangers boss Walter Smith refuses to be drawn on whether leading scorer Kris Boyd will start the must-win Champions League tie with Stuttgart…. From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: soccer matches. The blog is also related to: french soccer.

I got a phone call about 8:50 this morning that my 20 year old cousin, Jay Derby, was accidentally shot and killed last night. I’m with my family in Charlotte now. Please pray for me and my family in the midst of this tragic loss. In the midst of this senseless death, the Lord is comforting me tremendously through the truth of His word. Please pray for the same comfort for my aunt and uncle as they struggle through the loss of their son. You can read the news report at www.charlotteobserver.com/topstories/story/1070268.html

The Boyd– 5 Caravel Lane Docklands

Welcome to your first End of Year Financial Review from JC Street. This week, Sharn will focus on one of her very favourite developments –The Boyd at Docklands.

The Boyd is a 19 level building with 168 apartments in a mix of one, two and three bedroom apartments in the heart of NewQuay, Docklands. It offers residents with a combination of views of Victoria Harbour and the city, with waterfront apartments within minutes of Melbourne’s CBD.

5 Caravel Lane, Docklands

Top Sale in Financial Year 09: 1002/5 Caravel Lane $875,000

Bottom Sale in Financial Year 09: 4080/5 Caravel Lane $460,000

Number of Apartment Transactions in Docklands: 197

Number of Auctions in Docklands: 27

Number of Auctions Sold in Docklands: 27

Average Sale Price in Docklands: $608,970

Sales for 2009:

707/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $537500 – Two bedrooms

1208/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $510,520 – Two bedrooms

2006/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $710,000 – Three bedrooms

1002/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $875,000 – Three bedrooms

1307/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $580,000 – Two bedrooms

2103/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $600,000 – Two bedrooms

408/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $460,000 – Two bedrooms

1303/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands Undisclosed – Two bedrooms

Rentals for 2009:

405/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $680 pw – Two bedrooms

514/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $400 pw – One bedrooms

805/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $530 pw – Two bedrooms

2202/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $900 pw – Three bedrooms

405/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $640 pw – Two bedrooms

1507/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $500 pw – Two bedrooms

409/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $390 pw – One bedroom

408/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $470 pw – Two bedrooms

904/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $520 pw – Two bedrooms

2001/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $1100 pw – Three bedrooms

704/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $490 pw – Two bedrooms

605/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $500 pw – Two bedrooms

606/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $480 pw – Two bedrooms

1004/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $500 pw – Two bedrooms

1909/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $390 pw – One bedroom

1709/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $390 pw – One bedroom

803/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $500 pw – Two bedrooms

404/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $480 pw – Two bedrooms

406/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands Undisclosed – Two bedrooms

1003/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $700 pw – Two bedrooms

1205/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $475 pw – Two bedrooms

1705/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $520 pw – Two bedrooms

609/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $380 pw – One bedroom

1406/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $500 pw – Two bedrooms

511/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $325 pw  – One bedroom

407/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands Undisclosed – Two bedrooms

607/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $480 pw – Two bedrooms

1404/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $495 pw – Two bedrooms

1007/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $670 pw – Two bedrooms

514/5 Caravel Lane, Docklands $380 pw – One bedroom

Body Corporate: The body corporate for this building is Teys. They are a large body corporate management firm who manage several buildings in the Docklands precinct.

Facilities: The development has a great sense of community which is encouraged by the facilities of 25 metre lap pool and gym.

There is also a thriving retail element at Docklands, which provides great convenience and appeals to many of the owners and tenants in the block. Restaurants such as Live Bait, Berth and Mecca Bah have a cult following, as does the new super-supermarket Costco. A new shopping precinct featuring many well loved stores and the impending addition of Myer add to desire for leasing accommodation who work at Docklands. There is great parking facilities onsite for visitors, and wonderful proximity to Etihad Stadium. Employers such as NAB and ANZ have also moved their sizable workforces to the Docklands precinct, making growth from the corporate sector a sure thing.

Demographics: Since original settlement, we have seen the slow but steady shift of higher occupancy rates by owners. Most purchasers at the Boyd are young professionals who work locally in the CBD. There are a few more mature owners or families from the country who utilise their apartment as a ‘lock up and leave’ second home. There are investors also who lease privately or through serviced apartment arrangements.

For in depth information on the history of Docklands, make sure to check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands,_Victoria

Year of Build: 2003

Developer: MAB Corporation

Number of Apartments in Block: Approximately 168

Construction Nearby Underway: The Southern Star Skywheel is in construction, and will likely mimic a London Eye style tourist attraction. VicUrban are currently constructing a development named Convesso Concavo.

Forecast for the 2010-2011 Financial Year: We invisage that continuing first home owner interest and buying power will keep the market buoyant in Docklands for the first half of 2010. Dependant on bank interest rates, we could experience a flattening of the market in 2010 in the plus $500,000 sector. Mum and Dad investors could well make a comeback in 2010 once first home owners lose their puff and buying power. The Boyd offers a unique buying opportunity in a blue chip neighbourhood which should cushion it from too many market fluctuations.

For further information on this, or any other property needs you may have, please contact:

Sharn Swann

Sales Consultant

m) 0406 634 346

e) sharn@jcstreetrealestate.com.au

Links to my assumptions series:

1. Assumptions: Desire
2. Assumptions: Adaption
3. Assumptions: Control
4. Assumptions: Power
5. Assumptions: Complex Adaptive Systems
6. Assumptions: OODA Loop
7. Assumptions: Orientation
8. Assumptions: Decision
9. Assumptions: Adaption Stack
10. Assumptions: Culture
11. Assumptions: Politics
12. Assumptions: Strategy
13. Assumptions: Operational Art
14. Assumptions: Tactics
15. Assumptions: War

By Cara Sulieman

A GROUP set up in memory of Brandon Muir are to have their child protection petition heard before a committee of the Scottish Parliament.

Calling on the government to set up a Safe Guardian scheme, they hope that children who are suffering from suspected abuse can stay with a safe family member while social services investigate.

RealJustice4Brandon claim that Brandon’s life might have been saved if he had been able to stay with his grandparents instead of returning to his mother’s house.

The tragic tot from Dundee died from a ruptured intestine just hours after his mother’s boyfriend, Robert Cunningham, assaulted him.

Allan Petrie from the campaign group hopes that the petition – which will be heard by the Public Petitions Committee on December 1 – will bring in a law to help protect Scotland’s children.

“Wake up call”

And he hopes that the politicians will take the opportunity to improve child protection in Scotland.

He said: “Every time there is a child killed at the hands of their parent or someone with responsibility over them – who are usually under the influence of illegal drugs – we hear from politicians that it is a wake up call but then they seem to hit the snooze button till the next time.

“We have produced proposals that we think will not only help save lives and stop children from being abused but also break the cycle of drug addiction in this country by removing children from a drugs environment, which they are being introduced to as normal way of life, whilst keeping them within the family network.”

The Safe Guardian proposal the group have put forward involves placing the child with family members who live in another house and who has undergone police background checks.

Allan believes that it is the best way to ensure that the child is kept safe with the least disruption to their life as possible.

“Less traumatic”

He said: “We believe that keeping the child within the family network is important for the child.

“It would be less traumatic for the child to go and live with a family member and, where there is an investigation into alleged abuse, the child would be in a safe zone.

“If the allegations were false then there would be less of a stigma for the child in returning home as they have only been spending time with a relative – something which is normal in many families.”

With 380 signatures on the petition, Allan is hoping that it has enough clout to persuade the MSPs on the committee to look further into the issue and lead to it being debated in the parliament.

He said: “We hope that with the support that has been shown for our proposals the Petitions Committee will support the Safe Guardian Law’s inclusion for debate within the Scottish Parliament.

“These proposals would be inexpensive to implement and ease the extreme pressure on the social services and foster care system allowing them to pick up the children who have no extended family to act as safe guardian.”

“Rethink care system”

As well as the Safe Guardian Law, the petition proposes a number of steps that local authorities could take to help mothers who are addicted to drugs.

It suggests that mothers who are known to be users of drugs be monitored and helped to kick their addiction. If they are still using when they give birth, then the baby would be placed with a “safe guardian” until she has overcome her addiction.

Barnardo’s Scotland said that they had been campaigning for the government to “rethink” the way the care system works.

SallyAnn Kelly head of children’s operations said: “We need to have a straightforward and coherent system which supports children at risk

“This will require political dialogue at UK, Scottish and local level to agree a route forward. I strongly support the strengthening of the systems that are in place to protect children.

“This can only be achieved by the public, politicians and professionals supporting each other to highlight theses issues in this very complex and difficult area.”

Robert Cunningham was found guilty of culpable homicide and sentenced to ten years in prison in March.

Brandon’s mother, Heather Boyd, was cleared of all involvement in his death.

See more of our pictures at our Flickr site and videos at our dedicated channel,  Deadline TV.

(props Shloky) Defense and the National Interest is shutting down. For those that don’t know, DNI is the home of the late great John Boyd’s compendium. This is a priceless archive of one of the great and original American military thinkers of the twentieth century that has been available as a free download as a service to the greater strategic community. Shloky reports that John Robb is working on creating an archive of DNI but, in the interim, be a resilient community and download the Boyd library for yourself:

A Discourse on Winning and Losing

Abstract of the Discourse and Conceptual Spiral (413KB pdf)

Destruction and Creation (on chetrichards.com)

Patterns of Conflict

Original format in PDF (2.9 MB)
PPT (1.5 MB)
PDF of PPT (830 KB)

Strategic Game of ? and ?

Original format in PDF (587 KB)
PPT (319 KB)
PDF of PPT (97 KB)

Organic Design for Command and Control

Original format in PDF (409 KB)
PPT (201 KB)
PDF of PPT (90 KB)

The Essence of Winning and Losing (on chetrichards.com)

Earlier work

Aerial Attack Study (7572KB pdf)

Fast Transients (1292Kb pdf)

Source lists

Patterns of Conflict

Destruction and Creation

There’s also a lot of 4GW material for people who swing that way including the original Lind article.

The common modern taxonomy of war used in these United States has four levels:

1. Political
2. Strategic
3. Operational
4. Tactical

Of these the conception of the operational level of war is the most recent. Alien: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy by Justin Kelly and Mike Brennan argues that operational art is a monster that has consumed what used to be considered strategy to no great effect. This quotation from John Hay’s and John Nicolay’s biography of Lincoln is suggestive of what the authors of “Alien” posit is a more traditional view of strategy:

War and politics, campaign and statecraft, are Siamese twins, inseparable and interdependent; and to talk of military operations without the direction and interference of an administrator is as absurd as to plan a campaign without recruits, pay or rations.

Hay and Nicolay were Lincoln’s staff during the Great War of the Rebellion and had front row seats on the man they called the Great Tycoon’s management of a war as the politician and strategist in chief. In an earlier Committee report I related some of Abraham Lincoln’s style of command. Lincoln would walk from the White House down to the War Department telegraph room, open the drawer where all the dispatches for that day were kept, and read through all of them. In this way Lincoln often knew what was happening on distant battlefields before the high command in Washington knew. He would also send orders directly to field commanders based on his readings. Whether this was a good thing or bad thing from a purely military stand point is something Civil War historians differ upon with some arguing that Lincoln was a strategic genius and others arguing he was a strategic imbecile. What seems unarguable is that he was one of two men in the entire Union who could keep the war in his own head, Ulysses S. Grant being the other. Part of this came from the fact that the interface between politics and strategy happened within Lincoln’s brain.

In contrast to an argument that other military writers, most notoriously the Elder Moltke, have advanced, that political leaders should keep entirely out of “purely military” affairs, Kelly and Brennan argue that political leaders should be intimately involved in strategy and even tactics. Lincoln himself was involved in tactics: almost any gun maker could drop by the White House with a new gun design and get the president, often accompanied by one of his boys, to go out behind the White House and shoot the guns. Note the example of Christopher Miner Spencer, inventor of the Spencer Repeating Rifle:

Although the Spencer rifle had been developed as early as 1859, it was not initially used by the Union. On August 18, 1863, Christopher Spencer walked into the White House carrying one of his rifles and a supply of cartridges. He walked past the sentries, and into Abraham Lincoln’s office. After some discussion, he returned the following afternoon, when Spencer and Lincoln were joined by Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War and other officials, and the group then proceeded to walk out on the Mall. Near the site of the Washington Monument, they engaged in target shooting.

Moltke, a contemporary,would have probably danced a jig or thrown a fit. Nevertheless, some of America’s greatest war presidents like Polk, Lincoln, FDR, and Truman were constantly meddling in what today would be considered the sandbox of the military. America’s worst president, Thomas Woodrow Wilson (may he burn in hell), despite being a control freak and a sanctimonious prig, exercised little control over military strategy. Before Black Jack Pershing went off to France, he met with Wilson only once. When he tried to tell Woody something about the war, Wilson cut him off with the remark that Pershing came to him highly recommended and that he, Wilson, was sure he’d do a bang up job. That was the effective end of the interview and, true to his word, Wilson paid little attention to the military effort, leaving the running of the war to Secretary of War Newton Baker, avowed pacifist and former mayor of Cleveland, OH, Peyton C. March, Army Chief of Staff, and Pershing. If the otherworldly Wilson had employed something like strategy such as engaging in a build up of the U.S. Army before entry into World War I as a way of persuading the Germans and the Entente to be more reasonable (reasonable being do what we say) instead of counting on his shining personal righteousness acting as a beacon of peace from across the Atlantic, maybe some of the destruction of a disastrous war and a disastrous peace might have been avoided.

Kelly and Brennan cite Clausewitz in support of their argument, making a point that this blog has made repeatedly, that war is a continuation of politics, not policy, with the addition of other means:

Clausewitz held a clear view that war was a Gestalt that could be understood only in terms of its political direction. He described war as an extension of politics that were themselves the product of the interplay of rational, nonrational, and irrational influences mutually interacting in “the remarkable trinity.” Therefore, political direction was not equated to rational policy but to rational policy shaped, circumscribed, and subverted by the irrational and nonrational forces inherent in the base polity. At the same time, the realities of combat—chance, uncertainty, and friction—and the independent will of the enemy made warfare as dynamic and unpredictable as its political direction. Clausewitz understood the dynamism of war—why it was “more than a true chameleon” which only changes its skin color. In today’s terminology, Clausewitz saw war as a complex system constantly threatening to escape human control, to lose coherence and slide into chaos. This recognition led him to postulate a theory of war based on how war might be prevented from losing its coherence, and he posited a systems view in which it was made coherent only by its political aim. To Clausewitz, keeping actions aligned behind the political aim was both the greatest challenge in warfare and the essence of good practice.

Clausewitz therefore argued that in war every action needed to contribute to the attainment of the political aim: “tactics teaches the use of the armed forces in the engagement. Strategy, the use of engagements for the object of the war.” Clausewitz’s elegant explanation avoids the reductionism of Jomini, while providing incisive clarity as to the need to connect tactics (engagements or battles) directly to the attainment of the political objective of the war. As usual, Clausewitz is able to explain to us not just what something is, but how it works in practice.

The authors hint that a distinct level of “grand strategy” may be as unnecessary as they argue a distinct level of operations is:

In his writings, [Basil] Liddell-Hart often uses the term “strategy” when he is in fact (in stark contrast to Clausewitz and others) speaking about operational art. He coined the term “grand strategy” to fill the resulting void in the higher direction of wars. To Liddell-Hart, “tactics lies in and fills the province of fighting. [Operational art] not only stops on the frontier, but has for its purpose the reduction of fighting to the slenderest possible proportions.”

It may be that there is no need for extra levels of war beyond the more traditional:

1. Politics
2. Strategy
3. Tactics

Strategy (and war, itself a strategy) should be seen as a direct continuation of politics with all of its contradictory goals, mercurial pursuit of the latest fashions, back room deals, back slapping, and distribution of power. Policy conceived as a meritocratic, technocratic, disembodied, and dispassionate rational design of ideal plans above and away from the messy contortions of politics should be consigned to the realm of fairies, leprechauns, civil servants, and other fantastic creatures of myth and fancy. Grand strategy has always had a mystique of clever mandarins and military geniuses sitting somewhere deep in the bowels of government around a table designing clever and devious ways of winning power based on the intelligent application of cool and collected realpolitik. That’s dangerously close to the belief many on the leftward end of the spectrum have in public-spirited, selfless, enlightened, and incorruptible policy makers. The political reality of the level any hypothetical grand strategic decision-making would take place on probably places such decision-making squarely in the realm of politics and whatever diminished rump remains after politics is amputated from it should probably just be called strategy. The concept of an operational level of war makes sense to me, perhaps placed within narrower bounds, as Brennan and Kelly suggest.

As a software engineer, I am constantly being barraged with further obfuscation and novelties. Yet the fundamental principles of software engineering and computing have been fairly constant for twenty years. Much of technology development currently consists of the rediscovery and reimplementation of ideas that were discovered and implemented years ago. Many technology commentators declare that you shouldn’t reinvent the wheel and yet time and time again the wheel is reinvented and repackaged as the new hotness. Contemporary technologists aren’t as original as they think they are and older generations weren’t as stodgy as we think they are. Technology development is thought of as the discovery of the new when much of it is rediscovery of the old. Cutting to the essence of what a technology does and does not do is an important part of technocracy and yet the navel gazing fascination of the technology industry with the latest and greatest obscures the essence of most platform. Those with a longer view are usually marginalized and forgotten by an industry that thirsts for youth that will work long hours for little pay if only they get to play with the latest toy. Lack of historical memory is a characteristic of American culture but it reaches dangerous extremes in the technology field.

New and powerful tools for analysis to use in the ongoing adaption of power to the demands of the world is needed. But what is also needed is synthesis, as Boyd preached, and while many contemporary military jargon has great analytic power, it suffers from a relative poverty in the power to synthesize. The cult of the new overwhelms the cumulative experience of the past, which is often engaged selectively and then only in defense of the latest novelty. The engagement of the prospective strategic mind with military history should be deep and broad. It should probably engage with the whole of East and South Asian military history instead of a Reader’s Digest version of Sun Tzu. The West is important and I’m as in favor of immersing yourself in your own cultural heritage as anyone. But the role of non-Europeans in the world of the future is likely to wax instead of wane and the engagement we in the West have with it is shallow and spotty. My own buzzword enriched field of technology seems to have fatally infected military discourse with serious jargonese.

For all of us over here, I apologize.

More thoughts on Kelly and Brennan here.