Drone pilots to receive medals - Salon.com

Drone pilots to receive medals - Salon.com:

In a decadent society, actual courage and other martial virtues mean less, because human life itself is trivialized by the population’s high-tech environment. People lose in their competition with machines. For example, many manufacturing jobs are currently being lost. And guns and drones kill more efficiently than swords. Assuming efficiency is your greatest concern, because you’re a postmodern liberal who’s lost faith in your Enlightenment ideals of individual freedom and rationalist utopia, and so you’ve been reduced to a nihilistic, pragmatic systems manager, you’ll be in favour of winning wars regardless of the moral cost to your society. You’ll think less of old school martial virtues and you’ll scientistically assume that heroism can be measured. Because drone strikes are more precise, because they kill the enemy without endangering friendly soldiers, because drones are relatively cheap to produce--for those utilitarian, Philistine reasons, you’ll really think that drone pilots are heroic. Your notion of heroism will have thus been warped by the environment you’ve been stewing in. You’ll mistake decadence and mere usefulness for heroism. The cowardly act of killing with impunity, with a projectile weapon from a position of complete safety, will be honoured with a medal as though the act were an “extraordinary achievement.” This is Orwellian and our first task should be to appreciate the dark humour in it.

[taken from: http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.ca/2013/02/medal-for-cowardice.html ]

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Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of Grave Error

Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of Grave Error:


Having read and enjoyed several other titles in the Tanner series, I decided to read all of them in order. This is the first, and we learn what happened to Harry Spring early on. If you like Ross MacDonald you will very much like this series. I'm devouring all of them. The writing is good as are the plots as Tanner peels aware the layers of corruption hidden in family histories..

Roland Nelson, an extremely well-known consumer advocate, disappeared for a week, has begin smoking again, and is very nervous about something. His wife wants to know why and hires John Marshall Tanner to find out what's going on in this. Turns out his investigation crosses paths with that of Harry Spring, his friend and colleague, who had been hired by Nelson's daughter to locate her biological parents. Lots of surprises..

Good interview with the author at http://www.mysteryfile.com/Greenleaf/greenleaf.html.

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Sheldon Richman on Obama’s Drone Warfare - Hit & Run : Reason.com

Sheldon Richman on Obama’s Drone Warfare - Hit & Run : Reason.com:

"“Covert” drone warfare requires a level of confidence in politicians that they will never deserve, writes Sheldon Richman."

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Vatican’s chief exorcist thanks the Pope | The Raw Story

Vatican’s chief exorcist thanks the Pope | The Raw Story:

I guess the Catholic Church has decided the Dark Ages were more hospitable.

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Review of The Book of Joe

Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of The Book of Joe:


BEWARE:  This book was originally published under the title of Bush Falls.

He's a prodigy of alienation. Now a successful writer, having written a book about his home town, Bush Falls, that savaged the place, Joe receives a call from his sister-in-law that his father has had a stroke (he was at the top of the key, had just released the ball, and came down unconscious. Basketball aficionados present noted the ball swished.)   Joe's brother, Brad, ex-sports star, and their father never had much time for Joe.  His mother had committed suicide, a manic depressive, for whom the piles of pills didn't work, so Joe wrote a book about his town, never dreaming it would be published which has made him personna non grata, but it made him rich. Now finds he is obligated to go back home for his father's illness.

So as with Tropper's other books, in the first few pages a similar scene is set:  death, sex, familial dysfunction, alienation.  Tropper's books all have similar themes and characters: a stepson/nephew/child. dying parent, dead parent, sibling, a main character alienated from his family.  That does not mean they are redundant;  each is different in its own way and each equally appealing and often funny and poignant.  I like them all.



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