Author Archives: Rites of Patches

Lesson 4: Maximize Efficiency

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No person, company, or nation would be opposed to doing more with less. Successfully meeting goals on time and on budget is the goal of every organization in existence. No one wants to wait forever. No one wants to spend unnecessary money. No one wants to fail. McNamara’s fourth lesson is to maximize efficiency.

To support this lesson, McNamara takes us back to his time with the Army Air Corps during World War II. The United States was determined to strike the Japanese Home Islands with their new B-29 bombers. US transports flew fuel from India over The Hump to US airfields in China. When McNamara and his team analyzed the data, Continue reading →

Lesson 3: There’s Something Beyond One’s Self

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Whether one is religious or not, it is as incredible as it is unlikely that we exist. At some point, I wrote this. Right now, you are reading this. It is amazing. Yet, there are 6 billion more just like us, none more important than any other. McNamara’s third lesson is that there is something beyond one’s self.

We are flawed enough that we, in and of ourselves, are a pretty lousy goal. As such, McNamara was glad to have learned philosophy, logic, and ethics from his schooling at the University of California, Berkley. He took from Berkley the sense of responsibility to society that exemplified his career in public service. McNamara could have stayed President of Ford Motor Company for most of his life and retired a millionaire. Instead, he spent it serving his nation.

It’s difficult to derive some overarching message because the lesson’s “something” is going to be different for everyone. Continue reading →

Lesson 2: Rationality Will Not Save Us

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A lot of people misunderstand the moral of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Many have looked at what transpired and drew the conclusion that leaders could manage a nuclear crisis. As long as everyone behaved rationally, they said – as long as everyone was logical and behaved in a manner that brought them closer to their goals – things would work out in the end. This ignores Robert McNamara’s forceful belief that “It was luck that prevented nuclear war.” McNamara’s second lesson is that rationality will not save us.

For rationality to save us, two things must be present. Continue reading →

Lesson 1: Empathize with Your Enemy

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Empathy is the ability to put oneself in someone else’s shoes in order to understand their actions and goals. Empathy can help one understand what one’s adversaries want, allowing everyone to come to a mutually satisfying outcome without the use of military force and its attendant death and destruction. McNamara’s first lesson is to empathize with your enemies.

In the film, McNamara relates how empathy won the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev wished to install nuclear missiles in Cuba. With Soviet cargo ships bringing the final supplies to activate the missiles, President Kennedy and his advisors had little time to decide a course of action. Continue reading →

The Fog of War Introduction

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War. War never changes.

Or so says the introduction of every game of the Fallout series. Whether fighting other nations, groups of bandits, or our merciless existence itself, the concept of war remains unchanged.

Except that war has changed.

War has always destroyed lives. War has always destroyed families. By the 1800s, war destroyed cities. However, when Leslie Groves, Robert Oppenheimer, and others worked their magic, war has had the potential to destroy our world.

Enter Robert McNamara, officer of the US Army Air Corps, President of Ford Motor Company, Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and President of the World Bank. Filmmaker Errol Morris conducted over twenty hours of interview with McNamara. The result is the Academy Award-winning documentary film The Fog of War.

As McNamara states seconds into the film,

Any military commander who is honest with himself, or with those he’s speaking to, will admit that he has made mistakes in the application of military power. He’s killed people unnecessarily — his own troops or other troops — through mistakes, through errors of judgment. A hundred, or thousands, or tens of thousands, maybe even a hundred thousand. But, he hasn’t destroyed nations.

And the conventional wisdom is don’t make the same mistake twice, learn from your mistakes. And we all do. Maybe we make the same mistake three times, but hopefully not four or five. They’ll be no learning period with nuclear weapons. You make one mistake and you’re going to destroy nations.

The Fog of War is, in many ways, McNamara’s swan song, the culmination of twenty-five years of public service. The film takes us through Morris and McNamara’s eleven lessons of war, a rubric to minimize death and destruction in the 21st Century.

Jump to a lesson:
Introduction
Lesson 1: Empathize with Your Enemy
Lesson 2: Rationality Will Not Save Us
Lesson 3: There’s Something Beyond One’s Self
Lesson 4: Maximize Efficiency
Lesson 5: Proportionality Should Be a Guideline in War
Lesson 6: Get the Data
Lesson 7: Belief and Seeing Are Often Both Wrong
Lesson 8: Be Prepared to Re-examine Your Reasoning
Lesson 9: In Order To Do Good, You May Have To Engage in Evil
Lesson 10: Never Say Never
Lesson 11: You Can’t Change Human Nature
Conclusion

Bioshock Infinite & Video Games as Art

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(Ed Note: Spoilers ahead! All of them!)

The floating city of Columbia’s welcome center is perhaps the most beautiful setting in video game history. Sunlight breaks through the stained glass to the floor below. Marble statues tower over you. Beautiful music and the swishing of running water are all you hear. Flowers float past you.

Upon leaving Columbia, you step into the sunlight, greeted by statues of Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson. Citizens drenched in red, white, and blue enjoy old-timey carnival games at a fair.

It’s paradise.

Until, of course, you are asked to assault an interracial couple. Then to defend yourself from attacking police officers. Then told you can initiate all sorts of gory executions using your Sky-Hook. Through all the violence and blood, the sun shines on.

Columbia is soon aflame, literally and figuratively, from civil war. As the embers of a burning city swirl around you, you come upon a young woman sitting on a crate amidst the chaos, singing a startlingly beautiful version of Fortunate Son.

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As soon as I set down my controller, eyes still filled with tears, I knew I had to write about Bioshock Infinite. Continue reading →

Change & The Shared Experience

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At the end of the film The Fog of War, Robert McNamara shares a T.S. Eliot poem, one of his favorites.

We shall not cease from exploring,
And at the end of our exploration
We will return to where we started
And know the place for the first time.

The idea is that exploration teaches. It changes us and helps us better understand our world. Eliot’s stanza chokes me up, mostly because it has been so true in my own life. When I visited Colorado, the world beyond Minnesota opened before me. When I spent two weeks in London and Edinburgh, I gained perspective, the knowledge that all I am and all I know are a drop in the world’s ocean.

It is impossible to travel or learn without changing. There’s too much stimulus, too much that is new or foreign. Our brains must adapt to make sense of it. We gain a vantage point to reliably reconsider ourselves. We understand how we are all the same. And why we are so different.

When we explore with others, those relationships change too. It is inevitable. Meals are shared. Streets are walked. Drinks are had. Sobriety is lost. Minutiae are discussed. Life is discussed. Mishap occurs. And all of it is done in uncharted territory, where all you have are each other.

This is the power of the shared experience. When people go through a thing together, they become brothers and sisters. It is no coincidence that my closest friends are those I visited, or with whom I traveled, in Colorado and London.

Change is inevitable. And when positive change is shared, it brings people together in ways one would never expect. Or know, unless they climb out of their comfort zone and stare down the infinite unknown with their brothers and sisters.

A Disorderly Revolution

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(Editor’s Note: This is a pretty solid college essay I finished in 2006. It is an answer to the question “Was the French Revolution orderly?” I hope you get something from it.)

The French Revolution poses an interesting question:  How can an idea based on freedom and scientific reasoning lead to such tremendous chaos?  After witnessing what could be described as a model revolution in the Americas, middle-class French yearned for more personal freedom and political power.  With the ideas of the Enlightenment in their minds and money being stripped from their pockets as a solution to the financial crisis, the middle-class saw their opportunity to throw off what they considered the yoke of the oppressing nobles. Although the French Revolution began as noble and orderly, the revolutionaries became divided, leading to The Terror, which forever left a stain of chaos and disorder on the Revolution.

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More Like Pacific Dim, Amirite? (A Spoiler-Free Pacific Rim Review)

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Pacific RimPacific Rim is, at heart, a throwback to the monster and mecha (“Kaiju” and “Jaegers” in the film) genres that are typically associated with the Japanese. In fact, director Guillermo del Toro has stated that part of his desire in making Pacific Rim was to introduce these genres to a new generation of moviegoers. That’s all fine and dandy, but is Pacific Rim worth seeing?

The plot, courtesy of Wikipedia: Continue reading →

Prodigal Son

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This was almost a triumphant story. 37.2 seconds away. Then 23.9 seconds. Then 19.4. 7.9. Then it was gone.

This was almost a story of a young man abandoning a place where he grew up. Going off to the greener pastures on the other side of the fence. Then, having a change of heart, returning to great fanfare and celebration.

Almost.

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90’s basketball was the best. The Admiral swatting shots away. Shaq destroying backboards. Hakeem Olajuwon’s “Dream Shake.” The Glove to the Reign Man. Mt. Mutombo’s wagging finger. Stockton and the Mailman. And of course, Air Jordan, Pip, and the Chicago Bulls.

Has any sport been as loaded with awesome nicknames?

Has any sport been as loaded with all-time greats during a decade?

Has any sport ever been so compelling? Continue reading →