Buy the "After Words" DVD from C-SPAN

Go here at the C-SPAN store: http://www.c-spanstore.org/shop/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=189472-1.

At the bottom of the page, you can see the other three DVDs available from C-SPAN:

1) The original "Book Notes" show with Brian Lamb (broadcast May 2004)

2) The mega-Pentagon's New Map brief (almost 3 hours long from broadcast of September 2004)

3) Later PNM brief and viewer call-in show(about 90 minutes with hour of call-in show taped weeks later, pair broadcast first in late December 2004)

Technometria interview with Phil Windley on IT Conversations

Taped this a couple of weeks ago. Pretty warm when I did it, so I had plenty to say, and Windley asks good, leading questions.

I talk so fast throughout you can almost hearing me run out of breath at various points. It's a process of very shallow breathing that allows you to keep going very fast. It can make you lightheaded after 52 minutes, reminding me of long concerts playing the trombone in H.S.

But well worth the effort here. Windley gets a good interview, and I credit him for that, because I know what a difference good questions make.

Go here for to play the MP3: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail788.html.

Gap lowlights

■"In Egypt, a Vote More for Change Than Faith," by Michael Slackman, New York Times, 29 November 2005, p. A3.

■"Zimbabwe Turnout Hits a Record Low: Mugabe Backers to Dominate Senate," by Craig Timberg, Washington Post, 29 November 2005, p. A17.

■"As Nigeria Tries to Fight Graft, a New Sordid Tale: Antics of a Governor Reinforces Nation's Image as Corrupt," by Lydia Polgreen, New York Times, 29 November 2005, p. A1.

■"'Peacekeeping' a struggle in Sudan: African Union's force outgunned and spread thin," by Rob Crilly, USA Today, 30 November 2005, p. 5A.

Let's face it: failed states generate most of the bad headlines in international news, and fuel most of our fears (real and otherwise) of transnational terror and horrific civil strife.

Some experts say as many as 13 million people have died in, or as a result of, armed conflict since the end of the Cold War, with the vast bulk (upwards of 9 million) in Africa. Rest assured that the vast majority of those deaths occurred in what can be described as failed states, as in, they "fail" to serve the needs of their people.

As when states fail the people, the people turn elsewhere. Extreme times breed extreme solutions. Radical Islam is the radical alternative in the Middle East. After decades of "emergency rule" in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood looks a whole lot more palatable to your average Egyptian, and I don't blame them.

But give credit where credit is due: Mubarek's pretend elections beat Mugabe's. In Zimbabwe, the opposition is so cowed and beat up and depressed, most of them didn't bother to pretend they could win this time around, leaving Mugabe with the only mandate he's ever cared about: his own.

In Nigeria, it's estimated that various corrupt leaders have, over the decades, stolen about $400 billion dollars in national oil revenues. Nice work if you can steal it.

Then there's the African Union's stunning display of "peacekeeping" in Sudan, as the death total shoots toward 200,000.

Think the Gap's gonna go away on its own?

Japanese, Chinese, Geisha, Whatever

■"Acting Globally: 'Memoirs of a Geisha'; With Chinese Stars and a U.S. Director, The Film Premiers in a Skeptical Japan," by Carl Freire, Washington Post, 30November 2005, p. C2.

Face it: China's got the sexiest, most luminous female movie stars on the planet right now. Japan's got nobody near Ziyi Zhang and Michelle Yeoh (my fave) and Gong Li, three actresses Americans have come to know in a series of big Chinese movies ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "Tomorrow Never Knows," and "Raise the Red Lantern").

Okay, so maybe not that many Americans saw those movies, but far more have than any Japanese movies of recent years, so it's not surprising that Rob Marshall went for these luminaries from China's booming film industry.

Unfair to have Chinese playing Japanese? About as unbelievable as having Brits and Aussies play Americans? Or Americans playing English? Or Canadian Mike Myers playing Austin Powers?

Puh-leeze.

Marshall went with these three ladies because they're simply the biggest best stars available.

Globalization, baby.

And yes, they all will work in this town again.

The "frightening" "new" "hybrid" of criminality and terrorism!!!!!

■"Paying For Terror," by David E. Kaplan, U.S. News & World Report, 5 December 2005, p. 40.

Never fails. Every time the press writes a story about terrorists, we are treated to some "unprecedented" new nasty development that signals (duh-duh-duh-duuuuuuuuuuh!) the end of the world as we know it.

Now, we are told (for maybe the 1 millionth time) that terror nets nowadays seem to be self-financing through criminal activities, thus revealing the "dark underbelly" (okay, my term there) of globalization.

As if globalization would somehow eliminate crime transnationally when no state has eliminated it nationally?

There is nothing new or particularly frightening in this "mix." Way back in the Cold War the Sovs were the main sponsor of terror nets around the planet. Huge, systematic sponsors.

Then the Sovs went away and wannabe terror groups and rebels had no one left to turn to, so they were all forced to either adapt to criminality and self-financing or die.

This development does not make them nastier, or more powerful, just more desperate and self-reliant by necessity.

The fear mongers (typically, experts on terrorism whose stock rises with each elevated pulse they trigger with their warnings) will ALWAYS tell you how these transnationals are redefining everything and making the state superfluous, and they'll be no more correct than when the globalization utopians like Thomas Friedman made it sound like connectivity would trump all (remembering he also gave name to such Super-Empowered Individuals).

It's not a binary outcome, this globalization. It is a yin-yang like interplay of connectivity and conflict, with the former winning out over time. How do I know? Is the global economy getting bigger and more pervasive or smaller and more restricted?

So please ignore the "birthing" claims regarding scary new monsters. It's the same old, same old. Our side grows, and theirs gets smaller.

What the diplomats can't fix, expect the lawyers to challenge

■"A Warning Of Trade Suits Over Farming," by Alexei Barrionuevo, New York Times, 30 November 2005, p. C1.

If the Doha Round talks fail in Hong Kong, experts warn that there will be many more suits in the WTO like the one Brazil successfully brought against the U.S. over cotton subsidies.

Administration negotiators say the crop subsidies most likely to be targeted in suits are exactly the ones the Bush White House is proposing to slash.

Makes sense, on both sides of that argument. Bush makes his try politically, and if that doesn't work out of the usual protectionist fears fanned by some in Congress and the Lou Dobbs of the media, then expect New Core powers like Brazil to teach us plenty more painful lessons in the WTO adjudication process.

Hmmm. Department of Whatever It Takes . . . I like it!

■"Department of 'Whatever It Takes,'" by Kenneth T. Walsh and Thomas Omestad, U.S. News & World Report, 28 November 2005, p. 20.

Poll data that says the experts in America overwhelmingly believe any attempt to bring democracy to Iraq will fail, but that a majority of American citizens believe this effort will ultimately succeed.

The answer is, of course we'll succeed in bringing democracy to Iraq. The only questions are, "How long it will take?" And, "At what cost?"

The future of this planet, in a security sense, will center around the task of replacing bad governments with good ones. We tend to call this process "nation-building," assuming that if we build good governments, then we'll get stable societies.

In reality, this process is defined by creating connectivity first and foremost, which allows for rising economic transaction rates, which creates both appropriate risk sharing and a broad social desire to protect what's been created and is being created. That's when you start to see a good government. That's when you'll succeed, over the long haul, in creating stable democracies.

As I say in BFA, "Rome wasn't built in a day, and not as a democracy."

So we need to learn about whatever it takes. We need to master what I call "development in a box," or the post-conflict/post-disaster/post-whatever push package that our SysAdmin Force needs to bring to bear in bad spots at their absolute lowest points.

Whatever it takes? I call it the Department of Everything Else. It'll come not because the experts want it, but because the public will demand it.

The 2,000-plus dead in this peace-waging-effort-gone-awry make its emergence inevitable.

It's the only monument that will matter in the future.

Don't fence US in!

■"The Appeal of a Simple Plan: Fencing Them Out," by Karen Brandon, U.S. News & World Report, 28 November 2005, p. 54.

Edition's cover story is all about the Bush Administration's new plan to deal with illegal immigrants. Steve DeAngelis and I have been meeting with Customs and Border Protection officials over the past few weeks, scoping out possible collaborations involving Enterra Solutions' rule-set automation capabilities, so we've heard some insider descriptions of this policy-making process. Complex ain't the word. No, you need a bigger, more intimidating term. The discussions you have on the subject remind me of the military's move toward descriptions of effects-based operations, or where you ask yourself more plainly what it is you're trying to effect and, by doing so, hopefully you're broadening your vision of possible solution sets.

But if all that fails, just put up a big old fence, just like the ones the poor Israelis feel compelled to throw up. It's the ultimate firewall in a networked world: reasonable enough for an Israel, island that it is within the Gap. But seeing one go up between the U.S. and Mexico, more than a decade after NAFTA? Buddy, that's just plain sad.

John McCain had the best comeback on such proposals: "They'll parachute in."

Can I get a duh!

Ahmadinejad's ever shakier grip on power in Iran

■"Is the new president truly an exterminator? Mahmoud Admadinejad's diatribe against Israel and the United States was made against a backlog of muddle, infighting and weakness," The Economist, 5 November 2005, p. 49.

■"Without a Fixed Leader, Iran's Oil Plans Stall," by Dow Jones Newswires, Wall Street Journal, 25 November 2005, p. A9.

So great to be reading The Economist again. So great to realize that my analysis of Iran and Ahmadinejad in particular is not at all exotic:

Ö it is arguable that Iran's leaders, by seeking to achieve a nuclear capacity for purposes that are (to say the least) ambiguous, are keener to secure their own regime's survival in the face of American hostility than they are to destroy the Israeli state. Indeed, despite Mr. Ahmadinejad's diatribe, they know that any serious attempt to attack Israel would be more likely to provoke a large-scale assault, perhaps terminal, on the Islamic republic.

Ahmadinejad's antics are costly. Foreign direct investment is zeroed-out right now in Iran, a country that needs, by most estimates, at least $20 billion in FDI if its oil and gas reserves are to be successfully exploited in coming years (12% of all known oil reserves and number 2 in gas after Russia). Capital has flown from its stock markets thanks to his rhetoric, going mostly to Dubai instead. A $3B deal with Japan to develop a big oil field is in danger, as is the $6B deal on a gas line through Pakistan to India, so long as the parliament keeps rejecting Ahmadinejad's sorry-ass picks for oil minister (three cronies teed up to date, three incompetents shot down to date).

You can't leverage anybody unless you can leverage something. Right now we leverage nothing in Iran. The countries that could leverage Iran (Japan, China, India) are not incentivized to do so, given their own great needs for secure access to energy (Sound familiar? It should, because it basically describes our relationship with the Saudis.).

We can definitely try to turn Iran into another Cuba. I'm just not sure we'll like that pathway, given all the other things we're trying to do in the region.

But have no doubt: where others sow only fear and loathing, I see real opportunity, right now, to start building a future worth creating in the region--using Iran.

The Economist's great surveys

■"Tired of globalization: But trade liberalization and other forms of openness are needed more than ever," The Economist, 5 November 2005, p. 11.

■"The hidden wealth of the poor: A survey of microfinance," The Economist, 5 November 2005, 15 pages.

A great bit of analysis (the cover story on globalization, uh, I mean . .. globalization!) coupled with the usually brilliant survey collection of articles penned by Tom Easton and others.

No secret on making Doha's Hong Kong meeting go well: the Old Core cuts trade subsidies and we let the next Green Revolution do its bit to gin up a new generation of New Core pillars (all our current ones enjoyed the previous revolution, so no mystery there).

That's the top-down solution.

The bottom-up one involves micro-finance that frees women from women's work, gets young girls in school, and jump starts economic connectivity between the Gap and the Core.

The settlers are there, my friends. We just need to lay some tracks.

Bank accounts come with wealth. Remember when everyone seemed to keep their savings in mattresses? Well, that was back when many of us still worked the land, had meager savings, and didn't trust banks. We micro-financed through hoarding. Inefficient, but it beat bank runs.

But there's real money, and markets, to be found in those current-day equivalents of mattresses. Companies got rich in this country by selling mostly to the poor, as C.K. Prahalad pointed out in his great book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

Banks will go there because there's money to be made. It is estimated that the demand for micro-financing right now in India is upwards of $40B a year, which is 40 times the current supply offered by institutions that specialize in this sort of lending.

So do you think it would be a good thing or a bad thing for global banks to gain more entry inside the Gap?

As one micro-financier put it, "We are not paternalistic, we do not lend to the poor. We lend to those who do not have access."

Connect and get rich. Deng said it, noting that no country in history ever got rich without opening up first to the outside world.

Aid isn't the answer. Balance sheets are.

Idle hands are the devil's workshop in France, and hip hop is part of the solution set

■"An underclass rebellion: The unrest in France's cities shows that social and policing policy has failed, as well as integration," The Economist, 12 November 2005, p. 24.

■"French rappers are ghetto's social commentators: Politicians accused of ignoring problems might have gotten a clue from the music," by John Leicester, Indianapolis Star, 24 November 2005, p. E8.

Great chart (aren't they always?) in The Economist: showing youth unemployment in the age range of 15 to 24. Italy tops the list at 23%, then Belgium at 22% and France at just over 20%. The EU averages about 18%.

America clocks in at about 11%.

That much time and that much anger needs to find expression. Otherwise the boyz from the hood get too scary. Better to give it a voice, a fashion line, a musical genre, and an acceptable outlet for rebellion.

Legitimize the protest or face the wrath of delinquents. Connect or die.

"As in the United States, French rappers appeal as much to white rich kids as they do to French-born children of immigrants."

Believe the hype. Make it work for you. Or suffer the consequences.

The revolution will be videogamed

■"Dazed and Confused: Videogames, TV and movies are profoundly changing soldiers' experiences of war, and those experiences are already leading toward the next generation of war films," by Evan Wright, VLife (special edition of Variety), December 2005, p. 60.

■"In Iraq's War Zones, Therapists Take On Soldiers' Trauma: Thin Ranks Mean Repeat Tours For Troops Still Suffering From Last Round's Ordeal; Goal: 'Put a Lid' on Symptoms," by Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, 28 November 2005, p. A1.

Echo Boomers show up expecting a certain sort of war, thanks to videogames. The freaking-out factor is reduced. Images seem more familiar, and the ability to handle complex information environments where decisions must be made instantaneously at an amazing high bit rate can prove the difference between living and dying.

"Mad Max" meets "Apocalypse Now" is the shorthand of many soldiers currently on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. Raised by videogames and babysat by Nintendo, as Wright puts it, this generation has, vicariously to a degree impossible for previous generations, been there and Doomed that.

And yet, the length and repetition of tours wears people down. Truth be told, your average guy can handle somewhere in the range of 60-80 days of combat, and I'm talking lifetime dosage. You run them much past that number, and most will burn out.

Different names for it throughout history, but the data never really changes. Our guys in Iraq and Afghanistan may have faster trigger fingers, thanks to Nintendo, but their fractionated doses of combat can only take them so long. Get enough of them lined up across two or three tours, and the burnout is inevitable.

This fundamental human limitation, even more than the easily measurable and predictable impatience of societies after the cessation of wars/disasters, will drive the emergence of the SysAdmin force and the Department of Everything Else inside the Pentagon.

The market for our main public sector export (security) is simply bending our workforce to its preferred shape.

We either get good at SysAdmin or we get out, leaving the Gap for other nation to shrink militarily.

But since that will smack too much of letting China run the world, we'll bring that SysAdmin force into being, and our Nintendo generation will lead the way.

The smaller the home market, the more globalized an economy must become

■"Punching above its weight," The Economist, 12 November 2005, p. 64.

The secret of Israel's success? Being so scared all the time means the government encourages a lot of specialization in security, so plenty of engineers to keep things safe. Israel leads the world in engineers per 10,000 employees (well over a hundred, with the U.S. next in the range of 70, then Japan).

But the real key is the smallness of the home market. Start-ups can't make it at home, so they become "mini-multinationals" at birth, typically targeting the U.S. market from the get-go.

Plus, Israel's society encourages the risk-taking necessary to become serial entrepreneurs.

If Steve DeAngelis has taught me anything, it's that running start-ups successfully is an amazingly complex skill set. You need a fast and furious society to let that happen. Conformity isn't the great social norm it might seem. Singapore might think it can technocratically engineer a biotechnology industry, but it'll probably end up loosening that collar and rolling up those sleeves some socially to make it happen.

And Israel's got that looseness down pat economically, despite the tightness on the security scene. That's why the one country with no energy reserves in the Middle East is actually its most globalized economy.

Free the farms and the rest will follow

■"The harnessing of nature's bounty: The inexorable rise of Brazil as an agricultural superpower forms an important backdrop to world trade negotiations," The Economist, 5 November 2005, p. 73.

In BFA, I argue that the voyage from Gap to Core is essentially captured in the journey from rural to urban: you have to surmount sustenance agriculture to start the process of development. Once you can feed yourself, you can feed others, and rural labor is freed up for industrial use in the cities, so long as foreign direct investment can be attracted.

But to feed others, you have to be able to export to others, which is why the Old Core's ag subsidies (Europe, Japan, U.S.) are strategically insane. You want to win a Global War on Terror, you gotta shrink the Gap, and to shrink the Gap you have to liberate those countries' ag industries just like Deng did in China in the 1980s (and the Green Rev did in places like India and Brazil).

Brazil knows the causality behind its economic trajectory, and it wants to blaze a path others can follow. For this I deeply respect Brazil's efforts in the WTO and the Doha Round. It proves my maxim that the New Core sets the New Rules.

The clock is always ticking for the SysAdmin force

■"As Calls for an Iraq Pullout Rise, 2 Political Calendars Loom Large," by David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker, New York Times, 28 November 2005, pulled from web.

■"Shiite Urges U.S. to Give Iraqis Leeway In Rebel Fight: Americans Have Blocked Tougher Tactics, Cleric Says," by Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post, 27 November 2005, p. A1.

There is a clock that starts whenever the Leviathan enters a country. It is the local society's clock that says, "If you wage war, this is how long before we'll expect the benefits of peace."

Meet that timetable with your SysAdmin, second-half effort, or pay the consequences, which right now stand at about 2,000 killed for the U.S.

Think SysAdmin work is for pussies? Think again. Get it right and we're nowhere near 2k. Get it wrong and other timetables take over.

There is the political timetable here in the U.S.: Bush needs to start the withdrawal by the fall elections. Easy enough, as the rotational crisis within the ground forces will force that decision for him.

Then there is the internal political timetable in Iraq: various factions and leaderships want to endgame this dynamic, getting what they can in the process.

Those three dynamics push all sides to make the Iraqi security forces as strong as possible as soon as possible.

We have learned the utility of SysAdmin work, whether we wanted to or not.

And yes, speeding that process will get Iraq closer to the point where we end up letting Kurds and Shiites take care of the Sunni-based rebellion along their preferred lines of attack. Won't be pretty, but this whole process was never about avoiding killing, just speeding it up to its logical conclusion.

Lincoln wanted Grant because he could do the "terrible math" calculations that said the far more populated North could crush the far less populated South if it simply got nasty enough.

Well, the Kurds and Shiites have their Grants ready, believe you me.

Timetables all around, with good SysAdmin work being mostly about the proper sequencing of security, stability, recovery, empowerment and development.

Put that all in a box successfully and you'll have your SysAdmin force, you'll shrink the Gap, and you'll end armed conflict just like we ended great-power wars and state-on-state wars.

More sightings/calls of and for the SysAdmin force

■"In Year of Disasters, Experts Bring Order To Chaos of Relief: Logistics Pros Lend Know-How ToVolunteer Operations," by Glenn R. Simpson, Wall Street Journal, 22 November 2005, p. A1.

■"An Army for the Day After," editorial, New York Times, 28 November 2005, pulled from web.

"Amateurs discuss strategy, experts discuss logistics," so goes the old saw.

Actually, it's journalists and op-ed columnists who discuss strategy in our system, but let's put that systemic weakness aside for this post.

Good SysAdmin work is all about business continuity. I know, I know. That seems way premature, but it's actually true. Stability and security is all about re-/establishing business continuity post-conflict, post-disaster, post-whatever.

Once you have business continuity, then society as a whole discounts the residual dangers, and even if the rebels re-emerge, they never capture the high ground of future expectations. People discount them, businesses discount them, investors discount them.

If done right, the rebels/insurgents/whatevers simply become marginalized. They present no future except an end to the "chaos," so minimalize their "chaos" and their offer to end it becomes meaningless.

You want stuff moved in austere conditions known as war, call the military.

But if you want stuff moved with the continuity associated with peace, then you want logistical pros from the private sector. Keeping the military in that business is wrong: it's war solutions to peace problems. It's making the Leviathan do the SysAdmin's work.

This is why the SysAdmin will be mostly civilian in bodies, because that is where most of the talent is naturally found for making the peace work. The military, to the extent they're needed, are logically front-loaded in this process, this sequencing.

That's the essential second-half game we've yet to master, even as most of the solutions we need in the military are easily found in the private sector, right now. Frankly, that's why I'm working for Enterra Solutions right now and not the Defense Department any more. Building the SysAdmin function will be more civilian than military, and more private sector than public, in its overall orientation.

And yet, as the Times piece points out, you either reshape the military toward stability operations or get prepared to suffer more quagmires:

Stability operations are not a panacea. But if used wisely, they can spell the difference between a successful completed mission and an endless quagmire.

Yes, yes, even the NYT wants its SysAdmin force now.

Hmmm. Maybe the Grey Lady might even get around to reviewing my books some day!

China: let the economic transaction rate drive the political modernization rate

■"China Gets a Passing Grade From Foreign Firms: After Four Years in WTO, Beijing Scores on Tariff Cuts, Not on Intellectual Property," by Murray Hiebert, Wall Street Journal, 28 November 2005, p. A11.

■"A Judge Tests China's Courts, Making History," by Jim Yardley, New York Times, 28 November 2005, pulled from the web.

The Chinese government, lorded over by the Communist Party, gets passing marks on everything it can control through diktat, just like any executive branch. But where China gets low grades is in those areas where dictating just doesn't work, where instead you need clear rules that are independently enforced.

China's skyrocketing private-sector economic transaction rate is fueling a skyrocketing public-sector judicial rate. For that to work effectively for the economy as a whole, the judicial system must be impartial, or able to repopulate the country's legal rule set with regularity as complexity rises in economic and social transactions.

When the government's diktat crosses that legal line, laws and regulations will be declared null and void, something that just happened in China for the very first time.

As one Chinese legal expert put it, "It was historic. For the legal process in China, it was a first, and it carried deep meaning."

The higher the economic transaction rate, the more this will happen, and the more this happens, the more marginalized the Communist Party becomes.

We speak of inevitabilities for a party that bases its legitimacy on economic development, not possibilities. Even Deng admitted that, eventually, there would be national democratic elections in China. The man could see the future with clarity.

The Pack will be back: you hear it here first

The scenario unfolds . . ..

Steve Mariucci, Favre's old QB coach during his MVP run in early-mid-1990s, and Upper Peninsula native who grew up loving Pack as kid . . . is just fired by Lions. Matt Millen (Lion GM) is the world's biggest jackass and Mariucci suffered for it.

But no longer.

The Pack should have hired Mooch when he left the 49ers, but the timing all wrong, so we end up with Sherman, who is toast for allowing: 1) Favre's first losing season and 2) high likelihood of sweeps by both Vikes (done) and Bears (pain yet to come).

Now, Mooch is available, well in advance of Mike Sherman's inevitable firing.

We get Mooch . . . and Favre's turned on again like you won't believe.

Then Mooch convinces Terrell Owens to come and play for him again. Never a love affair in the past, but who better to take TO in? Plus, TO has always had a big crush on Favre, so imagine that scary combo?

So the O line settles, the D gets better with the scheme of first-year Def Coordinator, Green and Walker and Davenport all back. We field a trio of receivers: Owens, Walker, Driver . . . to die for!

40 points a game. Super Bowl 2007. We beat defending champs, Colts, in wild shoot-out.

You hear it here first.

Climbing back up on the horse

Dateline: In the Shire, Indy, 28 November 2005

Feels like I'm coming up for air for the first time since crush of BFA release. Turkey day/weekend trip to Chicago featured a lot of time in jacuzzis and sleeping late every morning. Father-in-law even spotted me pontificating on CNN Saturday morning (some old stuff I shot for them a bit back). All of it, including the single malt and the great dining experiences with family, was just what the doctor ordered. Didn't touch a laptop for a solid four days (almost a record for me). Only downside was yet another Packer loss.

Got a slew of stories ready to blog, including a few from The Economist (that subscription started up again).

Just got off long conference call with other seniors at Enterra Solutions. The pace of new opportunities and relationships and contracts and hires and being hired and so on is really amazing. Makes me even more committed to hiring the right person for the personal assistant gig. My life only monumentally more busy with Enterra, but how to pass up? These aren't just business opportunities, these are chances to change the world in really neat ways.

So back in the saddle, anticipating a mad dash til Xmas vacation kicks in for me. By beginning of new year, PA must be in place, newsletter (in some form) must be re-established, and I must have a major piece of reporting done and in bed with Esquire for the March issue (that travel begins this week).

I get tired just thinking about it, but excited too. Batteries recharged. No where to go but forward.

House construction going nicely. Plastering of ceilings and walls on second floor finishing this week, along with drywalling of much of first floor. Amazing to watch. House totally enclosed now, with heating on to help the drying process.

Just to clear my accounts, here are some pix from recent events.

Berlin trip, 8 November 2005

This is how Berlin marks where the wall once stood: two stones side by side that trace it's entire pathway around the city. In this shot is also the plaque you find in many locations (Berlin Wall, 1961-1989).

A section of the wall marker line as it crosses the street near Checkpoint Charlie.

A shot of the guard shack still preserved at Checkpoint Charlie (the "C" of three checkpoints that dotted the divided city and the one associated with the American sector).

The sign you read as you passed from the American sector of West Berlin into East Berlin, still preserved at Checkpoint Charlie (now a fairly busy intersection).

Shot of famous Brandenburg Gate in Berlin at sunset.

Front shot of Reichstag Building, which burned in historic fire in 1933. Crucial in rise of Hitler to power (he blames the Communists and launches a major wave of political violence following). The inscription on front: To the German people.

On top of the Reichstag building, actually on the roof! Looking at glass dome that now sits atop it.

Inside the Reichstag dome, at the very top. You climb a stairway that circles the down along its outer wall until you reach this crow's nest-like spot on top. Amazing 360 view of entire Berlin. I dunno, but I half expected to see Jimmy Stewart shoving Kim Novak from the balcony, or at least James Mason menacing Cary Grant. What a location shot!!

First view of Holocaust Memorial field of giant, crypt-like monoliths.

Second view. Amazing place.

Trip to Lambeau with relatives, 21 November 2005

Statue of Bart Starr, childhood hero, outside of Resch Center where we tailgated.

Me and my grandfather's plaque in the Packer Hall of Fame (Jerry Clifford).

Other place in Lambeau to see my Grandfather's plaque: above a restaraurant opening on ground floor off main atrium, they have the plaques of the Hungry Five, plus a special one of Curly Lambeau, marking the downstairs portion of "Curly's Pub." The Hungry Five are the five exec's who guided the Packers from infancy through the 1940s, or until the end of Curly's reign. They are known as the Hungry Five because they were so relentless in their efforts to keep the Packers in Green Bay, even after Curly tried to move them to L.A.

View from our seats in the North End Zone.

Thanksgiving trip to Chicago, 26 November 2005

While spouse took older kids to musical in Chicago, I took younger ones to Chicago Field Museum. This is the T-Rex they have in the main hall.

In thanks giving: a podcast of my Blueprint for Action brief

This is the one I delivered in early November in DC to the seminar series put on by Johns Hopkins and the Office of Force Transformation.

It is found here: http://www.jhuapl.edu/POW/rethinking/video.cfm. You can watch it in chunks or download the entire set of 13 vids at once (takes a while).

You can also access a PDF compilation of the slides (high quality), or just the audio as MP3, or notes of the talk (to include the Q&A--only so-so).

Pretty cool package!

This brief covers the first half of the book and basically employs about 1/3rd of my slides on BFA. Eventually, I hope to give the entire brief somewhere, but I'm guessing it would run about 4 hours with breaks.

For now, there is this.

I think of this brief as my "late Elvis" brief. Bit painful to watch my expanded waistline in action later in the brief. But you gotta remember: this was after many days on the road. If I wasn't already on a diet, I would be after seeing myself with my suit coat off in this video. For a while, it took my eyes off my expanding bald spot!

Oh the joys of middle age (sing with me! "Middle age man: Caught between 40 and 55, accruing more interest but losing his sex drive. Acquiring skills and a gut! [do-do-do-do-duh-duh-duh!] Middle age maaaaaaaaan! Middle age maaaaaan!).

Mike Myers must someday turn that tragic SNL character into a movie. . .

Have a nice Thanksgiving. Enjoy your families and see you next week.