The Spook Has Moved!

my new address is:
http://www.althespook.com/ravings/
please drop by! And did I mention you can finally comment? Really!

A Brief Note About Comments

After some discussion it appears that the Kelgarries Blogswarm won't be able to support comments at this time due to sheer volume of material we need to work with to achieve our goals. Once we migrate to our own servers (scheduled for early 2009) we'll be able to support a full comments implementation.

Thanks for your interest, and enjoy the blog!

How To Subscribe To Calligraphies As An RSS Feed In Internet Explorer 7

It has come to our attention that many readers of Caligraphies would like to have the ability to know when new posts are available automatically. Fortunately, the internet and IE7 provide this feature very nicely.

Rather than duplicate postings and eat up space here at Blogspot, we have posted a very simple but quite effective Tutorial on the matter at our sister blog, Tutorials On Using Voltaic Difference Engines. Enjoy!

The Undying Memoir Of A Footlose General

Most of us have never heard of Chang Qing. He lived, it is believed, in China around 550 to 490 B.C., during the Spring And Autumn Period of that ancient land's early history. He was a shi, a landless aristocrat who traveled and taught and advised rulers in return for his needs of life and as a career. Unlike most shi, he advised and taught and demonstrated advanced thought about military and political strategy.

What makes this occupation even more interesting is that, by all accounts, Chang Qing hated warfare with a holy passion. His goal in his life was to demonstrate to his contemporary rulers that his insights allowed them to achieve their goals without fighting, using psychological warfare, bribery, diplomacy, and a host of other tactics that only recently have become prominent again in the military sphere due to the enormous cost of modern warfare and the attendant unwillingness of both rulers and populations to endure it. His most famous work, the Bing Fa (Principle For Using Forces) became an instant classic and widely influenced Chinese and Japanese military thought for over two thousand years.

And in the finest tradition of the Vanishing Mediator, he disappeared forever as soon as he made enough money from his patron, King Helu of Wu, to live out his life in peace. Scholars have searched in vain for any hint of the date of his passing or even where he spent his retirement, feeding lazy fat goldfish and enjoying his garden and his calligraphy. But the power of his mind lives on, and this humble and most unworthy blog is devoted to enlightening us all in the ways modern military advances can be used to create an environment where warfare will finally become simply too expensive, too dangerous, and too unnecessary to ever be allowed to happen. And that will be the final triumph of Chang Qing.* (Images courtesy of Wikipedia.)

*To us Gwai Loh, Chang Qing is more often known as Sun Tzu. And you thought I was making all this up, didn't you?