leowmcgarry

[leowmcgarry]

"Does it come in black?"

(No, but “Space Gray”.)

[leowmcgarry]

도서관에서 일주일에 2시간 40주 동안 진행하는 강의가 끝나간다. 두어 번 남았다. 2009년 2월부터 시작한 것이다. 4년째다. 2010년 11월에 질병으로 2주 결강한 것을 제외하면 빠지지 않고 했다. 2013년에도 40주짜리 강의가 있을 것이다. 현재 확정된 것은 하나다.

40주 강의는 처음 해보았으나 그것을 함으로써 긴 호흡으로 공부하고 준비하는 일에 대해 조금이나마 알게 되었다. 대학에서 강의를 하면서 몸에 밴, 한 학기 16주 단위로 뭔가를 하는 습성, 대학 밖의 이른바 ‘아카데미’에서 진행하는 8주 단위의 일정...

[leowmcgarry]

“Generally Mediocre”

TIME’s Mark Thompson talks to Thomas E. Ricks about what’s changed in the military since 9/11.

TIME: Is it true that privates are punished more today for losing a rifle than generals are for losing a war? If so, why? Thomas E. Ricks: Yes, it is true. I say that because privates are routinely punished for infractions. But as far as I can tell, no general has been fired for incompetence in combat since Maj. Gen. James Baldwin was fired as commander of the Americal Division in 1971. Since then, others have been relieved for moral and ethical lapses that are embarrassing to the Army, but not, to my knowledge, for combat ineffectiveness. Indeed, one ineffective general, Lt. Gen. [Ricardo] Sanchez, was outraged that he was not promoted to 4 stars after failing in Iraq in 2003-04.

TIME: Why did you write The Generals? How much were you influenced by what you saw in Iraq and wrote about in Fiasco and The Gamble?

Ricks: This book comes directly out of those two earlier ones. In 2005, while I was writing Fiasco, I went on a Johns Hopkins University staff ride study of the allied campaign in Sicily in 1943.

While we were standing on a hilltop in central Sicily, one of Professor Eliot Cohen’s students related the tale of Omar Bradley firing Terry de la Mesa Allen, commander of the 1st Infantry Division, after Allen won one of the toughest battles of the campaign.

I was stunned. Here I was coming out of Iraq, where generals were failing yet not being removed, and I was being told about the firing of one of the most successful American generals during our first year of World War II.

How could that be? Why had the Army’s approach to leadership and accountability changed so much? That was the beginning of this book.

TIME: What is your favorite part of the book?

Ricks: I have several. I really liked doing researching about George Marshall, who should be better known. I enjoyed sitting in archives and reading his notes and letters, even going through the “desk litter” collected from the drawers of his Pentagon office. Some files I read had penciled letters home from generals during World War II.

But my favorite parts of the book were narratives. Dwight Eisenhower’s train journey from Texas to Washington, D.C., in December 1941, a week after Pearl Harbor, amazed me—not only did he meet the man who would help finance his presidential campaign 11 years later, he also got off the train and was asked the same day by Marshall how to win the war in the Pacific.

Another favorite section is the chapter on how Marine Maj. Gen. O.P. Smith waged the Chosin campaign in the Korean War. He’s another guy who should be better known.

His actions likely saved 15,000 or so Marines from being killed or captured—which would have been the greatest military disaster in American history, much more devastating than Custer’s Last Stand. And he had to do that while dealing with superiors—Gen. Ned Almond and Gen. Douglas MacArthur—who didn’t understand what he was doing or why.

Read the Full Interview

(Photograph of Army General Tommy Franks, via.)

[leowmcgarry]

Hurricane Sandy’s wrath being felt hours before landfall, forecasted to be biggest storm to hit northeast coast Late-minute preparations for Hurricane Sandy, the ‘frankenstorm’ set to be the largest hurricane to ever hit the northeastern United States and Canada, intensified Monday as monster storm shut down transportation, shuttered businesses and sent thousands scrambling for higher ground hours before its landfall. About 50 million people from the Mid-Atlantic to Canada were in the path of the nearly 1,600-km-wide storm, which forecasters said could be the largest to hit the mainland in U.S. history and will have a devastating landfall. It was expected to topple trees, damage buildings, cause power outages and trigger heavy flooding. “We are certain that this is going to be a slow-moving process through a wide swath of the country, and millions of people are going to affected,” U.S. President Barack Obama said, speaking to reporters from the White House Monday afternoon. The storm is bearing down nearly directly upon New York City and the city’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, said Sandy’s full wrath could be felt by 6 p.m. today.

[leowmcgarry]

Doctors regrow breasts in cancer sufferer

In a medical breakthrough, Australian surgeons have managed to regrow breast tissue for women who have had cancer surgery. 

They say in one patient, breast tissue was successfully grown from her own fat cells. 

Full Story: ABC

[leowmcgarry]

헉 백만년이나 유지된단말인가

DNA dating study kills off Jurassic Park

Reconstructing dinosaurs from ancient DNA has been dealt a blow with a new study finding genetic material can only last 1 million years.

Full Story: ABC

[leowmcgarry]

Arctic sea ice reaches new low, shattering record set just 3 weeks ago

New sea ice is finally starting to form again in the Arctic, scientists reported Wednesday, but not before reaching another record low last Sunday. 

“We are now in uncharted territory,” Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said in a statement announcing the record low of 1.32 million square miles — nearly half the average extent from 1979 to 2010. The extent has been tracked by satellite since 1979.

Read the complete story.

[leowmcgarry]

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

[leowmcgarry]

마이크로소프트가 분기 적자를 기록한 것이 처음이라고 한다. 

I’ve covered the woes of Microsoft’s Online Services Division many times over the past few years. The numbers have been awful. And unbelievably, they have continued to get worse. But not even I thought things could get this bad.

Reports Bill Rigby for Reuters:

But on Monday, it [Microsoft] announced a $6.2 billion writedown of a 2007 Internet-advertising acquisition - a reminder that Microsoft has a patchy track record when it ventures outside of its Windows and Office comfort zone.

Days later, Vanity Fair blamed Steve Ballmer’s “astonishingly foolish” leadership for a “lost decade”, in one of the most scathing articles ever written about the CEO.

It was not the news agenda Microsoft had in mind as it prepared to unveil fourth-quarter results on July 19. The writeoff is expected to hand the company its first quarterly loss - on paper - since going public in 1986.

Holy shit.

[leowmcgarry]

공부와 암기.

  논문연구계획서를 내라고 해서 오랜만에 문단을 맞춰 글을 써보려고 했는데, 잘 되지 않았다. 역시 모든 능력은 숙달하고 나서도 주기적으로 상기하지 않으면, 지속적으로 퇴화함을 깨닫게 되었다. 편의와 정리를 위해서, 한 문장만 끝나도 바로 문단 바꾸기를 하고, 외울 수 없다는 이유로 두문자를 따며, 비문 투성이더라도 일단 외우는 공부의 해악을 스스로 체화한 지난 2년 반을 돌아본다.

  치의학만 이런 공부 방식에 따르도록 우리를 길들이는가란 질문을 던져보면 과히 그렇진 않다. 가까이는 의학도 크게 다르지 않으며, 법학의 세계도 논리적인 글쓰기, 진득한 독해력보다는 파편적 지식에 대한 암기를 우선하는 것으로 보인다. 그렇다면 암기가 여타의 방식보다 우월한 공부의 방식인가? 학습에 필요한 기초적인 지식과 정리, 그리고 공식들은 암기가 필요하지만, 결국 어느 순간 암기의 수준을 벗어난 응용이 필요하다. 치전원에 재학 중일 때는 기초적인 지식을 습득해 자격시험에 합격하는 것만이 필요하다면, 암기로 충분하다고 생각할 수도 있다. 아마 그런 이유에서 비롯되어 현재의 평가체제가 굳어졌을테고, 학생은 평가방식에 민감하게 반응하기 마련이고, 필요 이상의 학습을 기피하는게 인지상정이므로 평가방식에 대처하는 현재의 수단들이 개발되었을 것이다. 

  학교에만 우리가 계속 머무른다면 모르겠으나, 어느새 나의 졸업은 가까워져가고, 매일매일이 환자와 선배 치의에 의한 시험과 같은 날들이 다가올텐데, 이런 방식으로 일관해도 좋을까. 이 질문에 대해 선뜻 긍정할 수는 없는데, 대안은 무엇인지 여전히 구체적으로 규모있게 그려볼 수 없어 답답하다. 나만의 "Study is hard work"를 고민하고 써볼 필요가 있다. 

[leowmcgarry]

A new edition of A Farewell to Arms will feature the 47 alternative endings Hemingway considered for the novel: 

Hemingway also compiled a list of alternate titles, including Love in War, World Enough and Time, Every Night and All, Of Wounds and Other Causes and The Enchantment, which Hemingway had crossed out. The final title, A Farewell To Arms, is taken from a 16th-century poem by English dramatist George Peele to Queen Elizabeth.

The endings, including one suggested by F Scott Fitzgerald, are in an appendix in the new 330-page edition, whose cover bears the novel’s original artwork, an illustration of topless lovers, by illustrator Rockwell Kent.

The ending that survived Hemingway’s revisions, about the death of Frederic Henry’s lover, the nurse Catherine Barkley, was:

“It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.”

Among the 47 finales tried out by Hemingway was the so-called ‘Nada Ending’:

“That is all there is to the story. Catherine died and you will die and I will die and that is all I can promise you.”

and The ‘Live-Baby Ending’:

“There is no end except death and birth is the only beginning.”

[leowmcgarry]

“Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

[leowmcgarry]

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

R. Buckminster Fuller

(via salmonbits)

현실과 싸워서는 아무 것도 바꿀 수 없다. 무언가를 바꾸려면 기존의 질서를 무용하게 만드는 새로운 모델을 만들어야 한다.

[leowmcgarry]

고전은 언제 읽어도 새로운 지혜를 길어 올릴 수 있는 책입니다. 역사 고전은 그 새로움이 더욱 강렬합니다. 역사 고전은 과거의 이야기와 교훈 등을 담고 있지만, 그것들은 책을 읽는 이가 어떤 상황에 처해 있는가에 따라 다른 의미를 제시하기 때문입니다. 이번에 강의를 하기 위해서 예전에 읽었던 역사 고전들을 다시 읽으니, 제가 지금 살고 있는 시대가 고전의 내용들에 겹쳐지면서 역사적 사실들이 단순한 과거의 것으로만 여겨지지 않았습니다. 지금 우리 시대가 이행기라는 어렴풋한 자각이, 이른바 ‘역사의 이행기’라 일컬어지는...

[leowmcgarry]

Form follows function. Or, form follows emotion.

Hartmut Esslinger.

[leowmcgarry]

Eye implant라 ㅎㅎ

Bionic Eye Expected To Let The Blind See By 2014 - PSFK

With over 285 million visually impaired people in the world, research into restoring vision for the blind is well past its critical stage. But with innovations in technology, and by turning to a focus to even just restoring rudimentary vision, research suggests that a more expansive solution is on the near horizon. Better yet, it’s a solution that may serve as the foundation for something much more instrumental, for many more people.

A team of electrical engineers at the Monash Vision Group (MVG) of Monash University in Australia has had early success in doing just that. The group has been laboratory testing a new microchip that will be used to power a bionic eye. With pre-clinical assessments due to begin shortly, the team’s encouraging results suggest that the project is on track to deliver a direct-to-brain bionic eye implant ready for patient testing by the year 2014.

via PSFK: 

[leowmcgarry]

마키아벨리의 이른바 ‘군주론’(Il principe)의 제목은, 이 책이 그의 생전에 출판되지 않은 까닭에, 저자가 붙인 것이 아니다. 마키아벨리는 1513년 12월 10일 자로 친구인 프란체스코 베토리(Francesco Vettori)에게 보낸 편지에서 이 책을 시사하고 있다: “그리고 단테가 말하기를 사람들이 공부한 바를 잡아두지 않으면 아무런 지식도 되지 않는다고 했기 때문에, 그들[고대인들]과의 대화에서 얻은 바를 기록해서 ‘군주국에 관하여(De Principatibus)’라는 제목의 작은 책자(opusculo)를...