UPDATE: the following, original focuses on the “smart” littoral combat ships of the US Navy. An example of how well they work, with their smart new crews, was displayed Monday when one collided with a freighter parked in Montreal harbor. Why does the smart new Navy keep driving ships into freighters?

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The Atlantic examines the Navy’s “smart” ships, the LCSs and extrapolates to the wider, modern workforce.

And he discovered another correlation in his test: The people who did best tended to score high on “openness to new experience”—a personality trait that is normally not a major job-performance predictor and that, in certain contexts, roughly translates to “distractibility.” To borrow the management expert Peter Drucker’s formulation, people with this trait are less focused on doing things right, and more likely to wonder whether they’re doing the right things.

High in fluid intelligence, low in experience, not terribly conscientious, open…

Dark Law and Innocent Blood: Shadows, Disperse!

***Today’s column is another short work of reality-based fiction, partly inspired by recent legal news, including a Supreme Court ruling in late May 2019. This is the first expression of an idea my mind has circulated for some years. Note: the unnamed observer herein is not Tom Ironsides. Rather, he is possibly a former (and perhaps future) associate of the spook turned teacher. At present, even I know little about him.***

Glimpsed through walls of stone… (Picture by Perrin Lovett).

The first images told him these foul things had recently fed. Without the living blood of others, they were almost invisible to all electronic eyes, even the most sophisticated. And, his device was the most advanced in existence – especially for this range of work – a melding of six different reconnaissance systems, powerful but portable. He toned down the GPR to the…

A Review of “A Fatal Mercy, The Man Who Lost The Civil War,” by Thomas Moore

The boy had it right in quoting his grandfather: “courage and fortitude are never in vain … no good cause is ever lost because all good causes are lost causes.” Even if he didn’t exactly understand the last part of it, that quote expresses an oft-felt theme, if not a rule, of life and of a higher civilization. It is the theme of his grandfather’s story from 1863 through 1913.

Was Drayton FitzHenry the man who lost the War for Southern Independence? The man himself certainly thought so, perhaps with good reason. Then again, the reader can, likely will, come to understand that there may have been a good reason behind the losing. The story is simple in its complexity, and visa versa.

Moore has really written two books in one. A Fatal…

As originally published at TPC

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Winged Justice From Cuba

A Tom Ironsides Story

Author’s Note: The following is partly based on true events, a blended, fictional account of several independent and real stories. Names have been changed, omitted, or dramatized so as to protect the innocent, the guilty, and the dead. The resemblance of any character or entity in this tale, to any person or entity, living or dead, is mere semblance only. Please, enjoy.

Sometimes the mind wanders. In daydreams, a man can relive what he found harrowing as well as those pleasant times that feel now, as they did then, just like dreams. Sometimes, if one isn’t careful, the two meld together. Tom’s brain turned back the calendar to another stage in his life’s journey.

Tom stood in the door of “his” Dassault Falcon 7X, peering into the gloom above a dark, tropical landscape. The absence of…

Originally published at The Piedmont Chronicles

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No Particular Place Nor Person – A Story from the Modern “Academy”

Sometimes things happen and nobody cares. Even if what happens is horrible. Worse, many, maybe most folks usually, if they consider matters at all, cheer on the atrocity de jure, especially when calamity comes wrapped in false promises of something … anything. They only begin to care when the wolf is literally at their door. Some only find alarm when jaws close around their own throats. Tom Ironsides wasn’t one of them.

Every morning was a grand new beginning in his educational experiment, serving as a humble substitute teacher in the high schools of a suburban county much like most others across fading America. Monday, April 22nd was no different. Coach R’s first period honors chemistry class, a point of pride at Silver Snuff Comprehensive High, worked rather sleepily on…

Happy Earth Day!

An older friend at a cigar shop insisted on watching the local and national news. On television. In my presence. I already knew it was Earth Day thanks to the wit and wisdom of this morning’s Dustin comic strip. What I didn’t know, the “news” filled me in on: thousands of communists, left-over hippies, stoners, and generally unemployed(able)-looking people gathered in Washington to rave about Earth Day, “science”, the horrors of civilization, and the clock running out on global warming (a farce they refer to as “settled science”).

Here’s a little real science, real facts, math and such, to cheer your Earth Day.

Climate change is real. It seems that the Earth’s conditions are in a continual state of flux. Over the past billion years or so we’ve had everything from a planet nearly frozen solid to a barren wasteland of a world where the only habitable…

Christ is Risen. Rejoice!