Just finished watching Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' On Heaven's Door (2001) and Ghost In The Shell (1995)...

Just finished watching The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018) and Oppenheimer (2023)...

‘Pet Sematary’ by Stephen King – Book Review

https://www.thereviewgeek.com/petsemetary-stephenking-bookreview/

Stephen King is known as the king of horror for a reason. His books stand the test of time, and whether it be a terrifying killer clown or a deadly viral outbreak, King’s novels have a way of worming their way into your subconscious and finding a place to nest, laying eggs of horror that rattle around your brain. Pet Sematary is one of King’s classics and it’s easy to see why.

King himself confessed he was unable to finish this story at one point, given the toe-curling subject material. And that subject is death. Pet Sematary dabbles in our relationship with death and it does so by mixing that in with grief, sanity and the idea of resurrection. Or, more specifically, resurrecting one’s pet. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here!

For those unaware of this book, the story (like many of King’s stories) is set in a small town in Maine. A young doctor called Louis Creed has just sunk most of his money into buying a new house for the family. Alongside his wife Rachel, daughter Ellie and son Gage, they’ve also brought along their pet cat, Church, for the ride. This is a very different walk of life compared to the hustle and bustle of Chicago they’re more accustomed to, but everyone gets settled in all the same.

Louis quickly befriends his elderly neighbour, Jud Crandall (a’yuh) who shows him the “Pet Sematary”, a place where generations of children have buried their pets. However, there’s another burial ground behind that which holds a dark secret, something Louis is warned against. As one could morbidly say, curiosity kills the cat.

To give much more away would be a disservice to this story but in many ways, Pet Sematary’s horror does not lie with its jump scares or crazy twists. Instead, the true horror comes from the characters and how they think and feel about death. Every single character has a different stance on the matter, from curious Ellie asking about heaven or Rachel’s defiance to never speak on the matter, this exploration – across a slow burn 465 page length – is partly why the book works so well.

In typical King fashion, the prose is well written and mostly takes place from Louis’ perspective. With that aforementioned slow burn, when the moments of horror do show up, sparingly across the first 2/3rds of the novel I may add, they hit all the harder. There’s one sentence involving Gage that will catch up completely off-guard while the pair are flying a kite. Another time, Louis awakens from a bad dream to something horrifying occurring, in a paragraph that will stick with this reviewer for a long time.

Toward the end of the book this narrow perspective does expand, with individual chapters depicting Rachel and Jud’s journey. Each of these players are well defined and incredibly fleshed out and deep. The dialogue flows beautifully and whether it be Louis and Rachel’s spicy fight over whether to talk to their daughter about death or Jud and Louis’ lazy nights on the porch with a bottle of beer, every conversation has been deliberately placed to either develop the characters or link back to that earlier theme of death.

In many ways, Pet Sematary plays out as a character study of how grief and trauma can change people. Louis starts off a rational and level-headed man but over time, he starts to change. His beliefs soften, he meddles in matters he probably shouldn’t and by the end he’s a shadow of the man he once was.

This is ultimately a cautionary tale about the dangers of tackling grief, how death can change people and, more importantly, how different people deal with this in very different ways. Louis, Jud and Rachel are three of the best examples of this, with the latter grappling some dark secrets from her childhood that have left her scarred for life. The conclusion to all of this is suitably twisted and deliciously dark, leaving on a very telling note that will have you thinking about this one long after you put the book down.

Pet Sematary is not King’s scariest book but in many ways it is the most disturbing. It’s a tough book to read at times and most certainly a slow burn. However, if you stick with this one, you’ll be rewarded with one heck of a story to chew over.

How common are people with Asperger syndrome?

New York Movie by Edward Hopper, 1939.

Although I didn't think that I'd make a post so soon after my last post, it so happened that I do have something new to write about. Before I found out that I have autism at the end of July of 2023, I had been observing what effects probiotics have on my health. I reached some important conclusions, but then the discovery that I have autism completely shifted my attention. By that time, my supply of probiotics had run out and I didn't acquire more probiotics until December of 2023. Therefore, since my attention had been on something else, I kind of forgot a few important things that I managed to determine about the effects of the probiotics on me. Even before I found out that I have autism, I reached the conclusion that probiotics can be very salutary for me. I order two types of probiotics on eBay. One type helps me with another health problem that I have because autism isn't the only serious health condition that I have. The other type of probiotics reduces the severity of my autism problems. So, I take three capsules every day in order to feel better. Before the end of January, I had been taking two capsules, one of each type of probiotics. But it turns out that I need to take a minimum of three capsules every day because two isn't enough. Fortunately, it didn't take long for me to rediscover this fact. So, how do probiotics help me with my autism? They do this by giving me more energy. It turns out that I have chronic fatigue. I don't know if this is caused by my autism or by that other health problem that I have. Perhaps both of these health problems contribute to my weariness. Therefore, I pretty much always feel tired and sleepy. This leads me to seriously underperform in whatever it is that I do if I don't put in extra effort. Because of this lack of energy and strength, I usually can't think well, I usually can't speak well, I am usually inattentive, and physical activities are usually almost like torture for me. So, the probiotics provide me with at least some of the energy that I need. I don't know if this problem, the chronic fatigue and lack of energy, affects a minority of autistics, a majority of autistics, or if it's uncommon even among autistics. For me, however, it's one of the most important problems. Perhaps it's my most important problem. But, as I pointed out in one of my earlier posts, not all probiotics are helpful. My probiotics, which actually do help me, are from Slovakia and the Russian Federation. For example, the probiotics that I received that are made by a company in the United Kingdom didn't help me. Anyway, as it turns out, I have some serious health problems, and it's amazing that I've been able to do anything with all of these problems affecting me. Since I recently acquired another one of Michael Fitzgerald's books, 'Unstoppable Brilliance: Irish Geniuses and Asperger's Syndrome' (2014), it's worth pointing out that this book too is worth getting for anyone who has Asperger syndrome. In this book, Fitzgerald selected nine famous people (Robert Emmet, Patrick Pearse, Eamon de Valera, Robert Boyle, William Rowan Hamilton, Daisy Bates, William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett) and explained why they had autism. For me, Unstoppable Brilliance has been just as useful as Fitzgerald's first two books, perhaps more so. In the book, he wrote, "So what exactly does it mean to have Asperger's syndrome? In 1944, the Austrian paediatrician Hans Asperger described the condition which we now call Asperger's syndrome. The condition was fundamentally based on a problem with social interactions, as he saw it. In practice, people with this condition have problems with the to and fro of conversation and social interaction. In speech, they often use a high-pitched tone of voice or a monotonous one. They have problems reading non-verbal behaviour, or body language. They frequently engage in monologues which do not require the listener to interact with them, or else do not give listeners sufficient context on what they are speaking about - much to the confusion and consternation of listeners. Much of this is related to difficulties in seeing things from other people's perspectives and in understanding social and emotional relationships. People with Asperger's syndrome are often described as enigmatic, odd or eccentric. In reality, they are severely puzzled about the social world and social interactions. At times they can feel like an alien, living on a different planet from other people. As a consequence, they spend their lifetime trying to work out the pattern in the chaos around them. The interests of people with Asperger's syndrome are frequently very narrow and specialised. Because of their enormous capacities for work, their phenomenal energy, their persistence, and their tendency to have a very narrow focus, they are usually successful in life. Essentially, they are driven more by their internal worlds and their internal ideas than by the social environment. As a result, they tend to be apolitical or take little interest in world affairs unless these things directly impinge on their consciousness. By and large, people with Asperger's syndrome are very rigid, controlling and dominating. Characteristically, they develop rigid routines and rituals. They dislike change and strive for what is called 'preservation of sameness'. In terms of sensory perception, they can be oversensitive or hypersensitive to touch, noise, smell and other stimuli, and they are often fussy eaters. Their motor co-ordination can be poor, and they are frequently clumsy. At times, they have difficulty separating fact from fiction - something which often earns them a reputation for lying and deceit. Contrary to popular belief, they can have massively creative imaginations, though as children they tend not to engage in pretend play and take all meanings literally. It is not uncommon for people to perceive them as being narrow, eccentric, narcissistic and grandiose. Because of their social difficulties, they can suffer from depression and indeed often exhibit a great deal of anxiety. In the past it was not uncommon, given their difficulties with separating fact from fiction, for them to be misdiagnosed as having schizophrenia and being inappropriately placed in services for persons with schizophrenia or similar institutions. Indeed, adults with Asperger's syndrome are still commonly misdiagnosed as schizophrenic. Depending on the severity of depression and the difficulties they experience in terms of social interaction, they can develop suicidal ideas, and indeed suicide is not rare among members of this group. Some people with Asperger's syndrome can also be plagued by poor health in general. In school, their poor social interaction can give rise to difficulties, and they are often misdiagnosed by teachers as having 'conduct disorder' due to behaviour problems. They may show little interest in formal education and be daydreamers in class. In the past, many people with autistic spectrum disorders were only diagnosed as having learning disability - the 'slow learners' - or were misdiagnosed as having learning disability and confined to the learning-disability services. We now know that a dual diagnosis of autism and learning disability is not uncommon. These people therefore require special interventions for both autism and learning disability. Furthermore, they require special speech and language programmes, special communication skills programmes and special help with reading non-verbal behaviour. At secondary school, people with Asperger's syndrome often drop out due to bullying or depression, or because of their difficulties in managing social interaction. As they are seen as odd, different or peculiar, they are often a target for bullying. Indeed Yeats, Joyce and Beckett were all bullied at various stages of their schooling. At university - if they get there - they have an extremely high drop-out rate in their first year because of problems with social interaction, organisation and social awareness. Feeling lonely and isolated, they can experience the world as being against them, and they often show paranoid traits in early adulthood and later."

So, how common are people with Asperger syndrome? They make up about 0.5% of the population. Therefore, they are not common. But famous people with Asperger syndrome are very common. In the words of the psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, "They have made remarkable contributions to human history." I can mention that the astronomer Carl Sagan, the musician Prince, the singer Dusty Springfield, the mathematician Victor Glushkov, the philosopher Alexander Zinoviev, the writer Isaac Asimov, the writer Arthur C. Clarke, the polymath Leonardo da Vinci, the writer Mary Shelley, and the painter Edward Hopper had autism. Since I have autism, it's much easier for me to recognize autistics than for a normal (neurotypical) person. But I'm mentioning these names only because they've been on my mind recently for one reason or another, because I know enough about them in order to point out that they were autistics, and because they are no longer alive. As I've mentioned already, famous people with autism are very common. Moreover, since I've had more time to think about my past, I can say that I did come across other autistics when I attended high school. I can say for certain that there were two students with autism from Iran at the high school that I attended. One of them was a year or two older than me, and I never got to speak to him. The other was a classmate of mine, Ashkan Mohammadi, and I got to speak to him on a number of occasions. Like most other autistics, Ashkan didn't know that he's autistic, and he believed that his problems come from a head injury that he suffered as a child. He even showed me the small scar on his head from this injury. In reality, however, it's now obvious to me that he's autistic, and I think that he inherited his autism from his mother. He also mentioned that his mother's father or grandfather (I don't remember which one) was a Russian when I was at his home. I think that his mother was the originator of the theory about him being not normal because of his head injury, and she was very protective of him. So, whenever Ashkan got insulted or made fun of at school, he'd tell his mother, and his mother would go to the home of the person who mocked him and sort things out with the parents there. I'm autistic too, but I never got such special treatment. I was bullied a lot when I attended school, but I never told my parents about this and they almost never did anything about my problems. Well, my parents are Russians, and Russians are the most idiotic people in the world. Anyway, me and Ashkan didn't really get along. Like just about every other person with autism, he was generally unfriendly, rude, resentful, and he couldn't engage in conversations. I think that his autistic behavior was more obvious than mine and that it was also worse than mine. He had a little brother, and I think that his brother had autism too. Still, Ashkan was a little easier to talk to than, for example, my father, who has the mentality of an impudent and aggressive child and who has no feelings. Don't believe me? Fine, I'll mention, for example, that when his wife was pregnant with his daughter, he made her help him to push his car out of the snow during winter. As a result, his wife gave birth two months prematurely, and this probably resulted in his daughter having a number of health problems. Another example - he's such a hothead that it's pretty much impossible to talk to him because whenever you say something to him that he doesn't like he attacks you like a psychopath and says that he will physically hurt you. Think I'm exaggerating? Fine, I'll mention that his aggression got him beaten up so badly by some other recruits when he was in the army that he fainted as a result. By the way, I'm glad that this happened because this shows that there's at least a little justice in the world. If you still don't believe me, your head must be filled with straw. Fine. Another example - he has never said anything nice to me, and, if he did, this happened so rarely that I have to think very hard in order to remember anything. In fact, he has always mocked and insulted me and tried to do nasty things to me. When I was little, he viciously beat me whenever I did something that he didn't like. And he doesn't only beat and attack children and insult them with the worst insults imaginable. He also beats and attacks pets, and even sexually assaults them. When I called him a bully once, his reply to me was, "Yes I am, and you're the victim." Anyway, it seems that I got a little carried away and began writing about some kind of monster and psychopath. Well, I think that Tom Cruise knows what it's like to have a similar father. It is worth wondering, however, if the woman that married such a "man" is a masochist or not. Perhaps she liked it when he squeezed the butts and boobs of her sisters. By the way, I can mention a lot more about this seemingly mentally ill subject, but my post can't be pages long and I really don't like to think about him. Of course, there are reasons why he's like this. For example, he was neglected and abused by his parents. Let's get back on track. I had another classmate in high school, a Canadian, who probably had autism. He sat at the desk behind me in Spanish class, and he sometimes annoyed me by unexpectedly poking me in the ribs from behind, although it's worth mentioning that my relations with him weren't hostile and I got to speak to him a number of times on normal terms. At least one, possibly three, of my teachers in high school had autism. One was a Chemistry teacher, another one was a Math teacher, and another one was a Social Studies teacher. The Chemistry teacher, in particular, was disliked by many of his students because of his unpleasant behavior and because he always attempted to give his students the lowest grades possible. The Math teacher was a woman who openly insulted me once for no good reason. Perhaps she disliked or even hated me because I'm from a certain country. Autistic people can have strong, sometimes irrational likes or dislikes. So, although intelligent autistics are uncommon, I wouldn't say that they are very rare.

Just finished watching The Changeling (1980) and The Sender (1982)...

Just finished watching Napoleon (2023) and The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes (2023)...

Now listening to The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes by various artists and Ave Verum Corpus by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...

On Georgia Street in Downtown Vancouver. Summer of 2018.

Georgia Street is an east–west street in the cities of Vancouver and Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. Its section in Downtown Vancouver, designated West Georgia Street, serves as one of the primary streets for the financial and central business districts, and is the major transportation corridor connecting downtown Vancouver with the North Shore (and eventually Whistler) by way of the Lions Gate Bridge. The remainder of the street, known as East Georgia Street between Main Street and Boundary Road and simply Georgia Street within Burnaby, is more residential in character, and is discontinuous at several points.

West of Seymour Street, the thoroughfare is part of Highway 99. The entire section west of Main Street was previously designated part of Highway 1A, and markers for the '1A' designation can still be seen at certain points.

Starting from its western terminus at Chilco Street by the edge of Stanley Park, Georgia Street runs southeast, separating the West End from the Coal Harbour neighbourhood. It then runs through the Financial District; landmarks and major skyscrapers along the way include Living Shangri-La (the city's tallest building), Trump International Hotel and Tower, Royal Centre, 666 Burrard tower, Hotel Vancouver and upscale shops, the HSBC Canada Building, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Georgia Hotel, Four Seasons Hotel, Pacific Centre, the Granville Entertainment District, Scotia Tower, and the Canada Post headquarters. The eastern portion of West Georgia features the Theatre District (including Queen Elizabeth Theatre and the Centre in Vancouver for the Performing Arts), Library Square (the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library), Rogers Arena, and BC Place. West Georgia's centre lane between Pender Street and Stanley Park is used as a counterflow lane.

East of Cambie Street, Georgia Street becomes a one-way street for eastbound traffic, and connects to the Georgia Viaduct for eastbound travellers only; westbound traffic is handled by Dunsmuir Street and the Dunsmuir Viaduct, located one block to the north.

East Georgia Street begins at the intersection with Main Street in Vancouver's Chinatown, then runs eastwards through Strathcona, Grandview–Woodland and Hastings–Sunrise to Boundary Road. East of the municipal boundary, Georgia Street continues eastwards through Burnaby until its terminus at Grove Avenue in the Lochdale neighbourhood. This portion of Georgia Street is interrupted at several locations, such as Templeton Secondary School, Highway 1 and Kensington Park.

Georgia Street was named in 1886 after the Strait of Georgia, and ran between Chilco and Beatty Streets. After the first Georgia Viaduct opened in 1915, the street's eastern end was connected to Harris Street, and Harris Street was subsequently renamed East Georgia Street.

The second Georgia Viaduct, opened in 1972, connects to Prior Street at its eastern end instead. As a result, East Georgia Street has been disconnected from West Georgia ever since.

On June 15, 2011 Georgia Street became the focal point of the 2011 Vancouver Stanley Cup riot.

 

Scotten Inn by Robert Gniewek, 2014.

Russian Military Failures 'Likely to Endure' in Ukraine: UK Defence

https://www.newsweek.com/russian-military-failures-likely-endure-ukraine-uk-defence-1704596

The United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence on Sunday listed some of the setbacks that the Russian military is experiencing in Ukraine amid its ongoing invasion, adding that those failures are "likely to endure."

"The forward deployment of commanders has exposed them to significant risk, leading to disproportionately high losses of Russian officers in this conflict," the ministry said in a tweet. "This has resulted in a force that is slow to respond to setbacks and unable to alter its approach on the battlefield. These issues are likely to endure given the relative lack of operational command experience of the officers promoted in place of those killed."

The British Defence Ministry also said that senior commanders were prompted to go onto the battlefield likely to personally lead operations due to "difficulties in command and control" and "faltering Russian performance on the front line."

"However, it is not clear that the presence of these commanders on the battlefield has led to a refined or altered operational concept. Flawed planning assumptions and failures in sustainment continue to undermine Russian progress," the ministry added.

Meanwhile, officials have suggested that Russia is not progressing in its war. On Wednesday, the Pentagon's press secretary John Kirby said during a briefing that Russia is not achieving its desired goals.

"All I can tell you is that the Russians have not made the kind of progress in the Donbas and the south that we believe they wanted to make. We do believe they're behind schedule. We do believe it's been slow, and at every turn, they have met a stiff Ukrainian resistance," he said.

Kirby also suggested that Russian precision-guided missiles have missed their targets in Ukraine possibly due to "technical issues," adding that "it certainly could be Ukrainian defenses, or it could just be incompetence on the part of operators."

The United States estimated that Russia's failure rates in Ukraine are as high as 60 percent for some of its precision-guided missiles, three unnamed U.S. officials with knowledge of the intelligence, told Reuters in March. However, the U.S. officials didn't mention evidence to back this assessment and didn't provide details about the exact reasons behind the high missile failure rates.

Former NATO commander, James Stavridis said last week that Russia has shown "amazing incompetence" in Ukraine.

"In modern history, there is no situation comparable in terms of the deaths of generals," he said during a radio interview on WABC 770 AM. "Just to make a point of comparison here, the United States in all of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq...in all of those years and all of those battles, not a single general lost in actual combat. On the Russian side, in a two-month period, we have seen at least a dozen, if not more Russian generals killed. So amazing incompetence."

Stavridis also said that Russia's military has the "inability to conduct logistics" and "battle plans."

However, Russia seems to believe otherwise when its Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in March on its Twitter account that its operation in Ukraine is going "according to plan."

Newsweek reached out to the Russia's foreign affairs ministry and its defense ministry for comment.

The Russian Military’s Failure in Ukraine Is No Surprise

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russian-military%E2%80%99s-failure-ukraine-no-surprise-206016

The Russian military invaded Ukraine on false or otherwise flawed assumptions about the Ukrainian military, and Western views of the Russian military were often equally as wrong. Senior U.S. military officers and government officials believed the Russian military would quickly destroy Ukrainian resistance, with some officials speculating that Kyiv would fall within seventy-two hours. Instead, the attack on Kyiv stalled, with the infamous forty-mile convoy becoming the climax of Russian logistical and planning failures that led to the embarrassing withdrawal from Kyiv in late March. Perhaps the West fell prey to the Russian information campaigns that have been demonstrated during military campaigns over the years, such as Russian involvement in the Syrian Civil War or the “Little Green Men” in Crimea. Military analysts ultimately believed that the Russian military had reformed after Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov’s 2008 “New Look” reforms.

The invasion of Ukraine has shown some of the operational design flaws that were endemic and characteristic of the post-Soviet Russian military, which Serdyukov’s reforms were meant to address. Poor force design and employment, flawed intelligence and reconnaissance, uncoordinated command and control, and systemic logistical problems still run across all levels of Russian command. The overabundance of Russian missteps in local conflicts since the fall of the Soviet Union should have helped analysts see the Russian military’s shortcomings. Even though they are not exhaustive, a brief look at these shortcomings may have helped shape a different Western perception of the Russian military before the invasion.

Ukraine 2022

Once hostilities broke out in Ukraine this February, the Russian military was plagued by poor intelligence and reconnaissance capabilities, just as it was in past conflicts, highlighting a recurring problem. For example, according to open-source reporting during the now well-known counteroffensive in Kharkiv, the Russian military often lost track of Ukrainian brigade elements, leading to the successful Ukrainian rout of Russian forces in the region. Specifically, by the summer of 2022, the manning situation had become so dire in some parts of the sector that the 45th Guards GRU Spetsnaz Brigade, which was the Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) and the GRU’s premier deep reconnaissance unit, had one battalion manning defenses southwest of Izyum and a second battalion manning defenses in northernmost part of northeast Kherson Province. This left the entire Russian force in the region effectively blind. Russia has also lost 148 reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles during the war.

At the start of the special military operation (SMO), Russian motorized rifle battalions appeared to operate at between 65 to 75 percent. Shortages in manpower only became more dramatic, leading to the call for partial mobilization in September.  Throughout the summer, manning issues worsened because Russian leader Vladimir Putin would not approve mobilization and because the General Staff and the Ministry of Defense’s ad hoc, ninety-day reservist-based solutions kept expiring. By August, members of the 152nd Guards Missile Brigade, an Iskander Brigade from Kaliningrad, were performing infantry functions in a quasi-attempt to hold part of the 11th Army Corps’ defensive line northwest of Izyum. Perhaps most surprisingly, the training of Russian forces appeared to be underdeveloped, even among more elite forces like the naval infantry, VDV, and Spetsnaz.

Russia’s command and control continues to be equally dreadful. Reports suggest that the Russian military did not have a theater commander in Ukraine until late April, when now-relieved Gen. Aleksandr Dvornikov was appointed to lead Russian forces in theater. Up to that point, each Combined Arms Army operated independently through its axes of advance, with little overall coordination. Coordination amongst military units seemed haphazard, with Rosgvardiya—National Guard forces—sometimes in the lead of Russian formations. Russian commanders appeared to have vast communication issues, which may have led to some of these Russian commanders being targeted and killed by Ukrainian troops. In a now-famous video, 90th Guards Tank Division members operated unsecured on their secured system, and their communications were intercepted in an ambush in eastern Kyiv and broadcast worldwide.

Moreover, secure communications have not worked because ERA, the Russian cryptophone introduced in 2021, relies on ground-based 3G and 4G infrastructure. Additionally, the GRU’s Strelets reconnaissance, command-and-control, and communications system, which also uses 3G and 4G technology, was disrupted early in the invasion. Russia has lost 201 command posts and communication stations since the onset of hostilities, making command and control difficult across the battlefield.

Chechnya I

In 1994, the Russian military, a force inherited from the Soviet Union, was in chaos. Officers had not received pay for months, and the Russian economy struggled to convert from a state-planned economy to a capitalistic market economy. During the organizational upheavals that quickly followed, Russia plunged its military into a battle with a determined and flexible enemy, some of whom had served in the Soviet Armed Forces and had Soviet equipment at their disposal. The same Russian egotism that led to predictions in February of Kyiv falling within days was also abundant in Grozny, with then-Russian minister of defense Gen. Pavel Grachev bragging that Grozny would fall in two hours.

After a series of failed and forceful attempts to dispose of Dzhokhar Dudayev, Chechnya’s president and a former Soviet Air Force general, Russia deployed a contingency force to Grozny, which proved disastrous. Kremlin security officials believed Dudayev and his army to be a disorganized criminal element that would be subdued on the sight of the first Russian tank, failing to grasp true Chechen aims and capabilities. Russian tactics were organized more on a display of force than a movement to contact. Intimidation and coercion were the main objectives. Detailed planning for the military intervention in Chechnya did not begin until two weeks before the operation, which had consequential effects throughout the entire twenty-one-month operation.

A Soviet and Russian adage for force generation—“Personnel: check! Equipment: check!, Training: optional”—lives strongly inside Russian planners’ minds. At the time of the attack on Grozny, Russian forces had not conducted divisional or regimental field training since before the collapse of the Soviet military. Most Russian battalions were manned at 55 percent, and not a single Russian regiment was manned at full strength. Russian units were casually constructed, and a considerable quantity of Russian soldiers were conscripts; none had trained together before going into the streets of Grozny. In the  81st Brigade, 90th Guards Tank Division, forty-nine out of the fifty-six platoon commanders had been at the military academy weeks before the beginning of hostilities. 50 percent of the men who hastily assembled for operations in Grozny had never fired a shell from their tank. Russian commanders suffered communication breakdowns at the platoon, company, and battalion levels. They were often forced to transmit over clear radio, allowing Chechen fighters to monitor their transmissions and insert false messages to confuse Russian forces.

As the Russian military began operations into Grozny, Russian commanders committed their armor forces without infantry support. Instead of pinpointing primary efforts and objectives, Russian troops advanced in three separate, isolated, and mutually unsupported columns. In an identical fashion to the war in Ukraine, where hundreds of videos show Russian tank formations operating alone in cities or villages, the Russians suffered catastrophic losses as tanks and personnel carriers entered the city and became apparent targets for Chechnya hunter-killer teams. As the battle of Grozny waned, 102 out of the 120 Russian infantry fighting vehicles and twenty of the twenty-six tanks that had entered the city were wiped out. The 1st battalion of the 131st Motorized Rifle Brigade entered the city with 1,000 soldiers; by January 3, as it entered the city center, the unit had lost 800. Russia also failed to block off the city, as Soviet (and later Russian) doctrine, learned after World War II, prescribed.

The Chechnyan and Ukrainian invasions in 2022 share some resemblances. Both saw inadequately staffed units, poor use of combined arms leading to catastrophic effects on the armored force, and inadequate intelligence collection—amplified by endemic corruption—resulting in a misconception of the enemy. Just like in Chechnya, Russian security forces painted an erroneous picture of realities, leading military planners to underestimate Ukrainian troops. Much like in Grozny, Russian armor entered cities without infantry support. Weakly executed reconnaissance meant that Russian commanders headed blindly into Grozny. Russian forces did not know Chechnyan strongholds in the city and, therefore, blindly committed frontal troops instead of bypassing them. This underscores further command and control problems that date back to 1995.

Georgia

By 2006, the Russian military was training for a confrontation with Georgia with large-scale military exercises in the North Caucasus Military District that looked like a dress rehearsal for an attack on Georgia. After a Georgian military attack on the breakaway region of South Ossetia, Russia attacked Georgia on August 8, 2008. The geography and military disparity between Russia and Georgia during the conflict resulted in unsurprising outcomes. However, a closer look shows evidence of Russian shortcomings similar to those in Chechnya and Ukraine.

According to Gen. Nikolai Makarov, chief of the Russian General Staff, only 17 percent of the ground forces units were combat-ready. Only 5 of the 150 regiments in the Russian air force were combat-ready, and half of the Russian fleet could not leave port. Russian contract soldiers did not perform well during the operation, with most of the fighting being conducted by special-purpose forces, such as Russian airborne or Spetsnaz troops. The Russian air force’s failure to suppress Georgia’s limited air defense capabilities and its difficulties identifying friend or foe raise questions about its effectiveness.

During the five-day war, command and control proved to be a critical shortcoming for Russian forces. Makarov had been appointed to his post weeks before the invasion, and the Main Operations Directorate of the Russian General Staff, a key position in direct control of the Georgian operation, did not have a commanding officer during the war. District-level commanders did not have complete control of the air force. Instead, the air force was directed by Gen. Alexander Zelin, the air force’s commander, using a cell phone from his office in Moscow. Communication systems were obsolete, with many being from Soviet-era stocks. During one of the battles on August 8, it was reported that  General Anatoly Khrulyov, the 58th Combined Arms Army’s commander, had to use a journalist’s cell phone to communicate with his forces because communication with his units was unavailable. Russia was so surprised by the timing of the attack on South Ossetia that the Russian General Staff was in the process of moving to a new location on August 8.

Intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance were equally dreadful for Russian forces in the Georgian campaign. Russia was both blind and deaf during the conflict. For example, on the afternoon of August 9, a Russian convoy of thirty infantry fighting vehicles encountered elements of the Georgian 3rd Infantry Brigades reconnaissance company. According to the book The Tanks of August, both the Russians and the Georgians were taken by surprise, and the ensuing firefight killed three Russians and eight Georgian soldiers, destroyed twenty-five out of thirty vehicles, and seriously wounded Khrulyov, along with several Russian journalists.

Conclusion

Poor command and control, reconnaissance and intelligence, logistics, force employment, and training have led to a weak showing for the Russian military in Ukraine. Military analysts failed to see the Russian military for what it is: a military that still lacks basic military training, suffers from crippling manpower shortages and inadequate Soviet-era equipment, and, at times, is poorly led. Assumptions of Russian military dominance were mainly based on Russian capabilities vis-à-vis Ukraine and the belief that most of Russia’s military reforms since 2008 had fixed institutional problems that manifested in Chechnya and Georgia. This turned out to be false, and Russia is suffering from the same mistakes today as it did in 1995. We should not have been surprised by Russian performance in this conflict, and it seems that Russia cannot escape its history.

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The Dragons of Eden — Carl Sagan on Our Bargain with Nature

https://athenarium.com/dragons-of-eden-carl-sagan/

Some 315 million years ago during the late Age of Amphibians, early reptiles began to roam our lands. As the scientist Carl Sagan explores in his book, The Dragons of Eden, these primeval lizards were simple meager creatures. But their arrival was “a symbolic turning point” in natural history, for much of life since then has been about the widening dominance of brains.

You see, from the humble origins of single-celled organisms to the vast structures of modern mammals, evolution has been a haphazard process in increasing complexity. Many of the most complex life forms today contain far more information in their genes and brains than their ancestors of a previous epoch.

Humans in particular signed a “bargain with nature” several million years ago, Sagan writes—for nature endowed our children with a “long childhood”, chocked full with play, questions, and mischief. While these adorable creatures can be a handful sometimes, their unmatched potential for learning is why we have survived for so long as a species. It is also why we have art and literature, math and science, and other wonderfully human experiences. Youthful plasticity is a powerful gift. But one that may prove to be a curse someday if we are uncareful.

Of course, “biology is more like history than it is like physics”, writes Sagan. It is a deep chronicle of accidents and errors and flukes that powders through the ceaseless sift of natural selection. Indeed, many vestiges are recorded inside us to this day. For one, this is why we find gill slits in the necks of developing human fetuses. They are physical traces of our genetic lineage to some ancient fish.

Similar relics may manifest in our psychology as well. Even to this day, snake bites and our falling from great heights are common themes for nightmares. We should remember, Sagan notes, that the deep structures of our minds were sculpted by the selection pressures that our ancestors endured when they lived up high for millions-of-years in the trees and forests of yore. He and others wonder to what extent our dreams remain tethered to our “arboreal origins”.

We know, likewise, as Sagan explains, that much of our intuitive knowledge and autonomic behavior, like our senses and reflexes, are products of “an extremely long evolutionary history.” Verbally conscious rational thinking, on the other hand, is a recent innovation, at least by the standards of geologic time.

What’s fascinating, I think, is how these programs and systems are simultaneously localized yet integrated in the brain. Sagan shows, for example, that our brains store memories in many sites. They are “encoded by ‘teams’ of neurons all firing in synchrony, providing redundancy that enables these memories to persist over time.” Some travel back and forth through the corpus callosum—a thick bundle of nerve fibers that forms a “neural bridge” between the left and right hemispheres of the human brain.

Of course, functional problems arise when one or more regions of the brain is damaged. “Accidents or strokes to the temporal or parietal lobes of the left hemisphere of the neocortex”, Sagan writes, “result in impairment of the ability to read, write, speak and do arithmetic.” Conversely, “lesions in the right hemisphere lead to impairment of three-dimensional vision, pattern recognition, musical ability and holistic reasoning.” Meanwhile, “injuries to the right parietal lobe… sometimes result in the inability of a patient to recognize his [or her] own face in a mirror or photograph.”

But when it is firing as it should, the mammalian brain must be among the most spectacular constructions in all of biology. Somehow, many of these feeble neurons—which we might think of as individual units for computation—come together in groups of roughly a hundred to make cortical minicolumns in the human brain.

In turn, some fifty to a hundred minicolumns make for a macrocolumn, while many more macrocolumns make for the cortical areas that characterize the broad regions of the human cerebral cortex. All of which, amongst other things, help to bring our perception, language, thought, and consciousness into being.

What’s equally fantastic is how all these disparate programs and organizations consort together. The brain is certainly more than the sum of its parts. No human system, from language and culture, to art and music, to science and math, is purely intuitive or rational. Its product is a melding of worlds in the brain. A merger of deep synaptic programs. In Sagan’s view, we might go as far as to say that “human culture is the function of the corpus callosum” through its bridging of our hemispheres.

Science is exactly like this as well, Sagan argues. It is a daring and creative act that is backed by logical reasoning and verification. For instance, it took great inspiration and imagination on the part of Albert Einstein to conceive of the warping of spacetime in his formulation of general relativity. But it took a good amount of left-brained experiments—from the perihelion precession of Mercury’s orbit to gravitational redshift of light—to verify what might otherwise have been a creative but outlandish description of our physical universe.

Of course, life is often a matter of degree. Sagan himself wonders to what extent the mind might manifest in other mammals. Do elephants see beauty in their landscapes? Do whales enjoy the songs of other whales? Can horses feel horse-like patriotism? Might dogs experience their own version of religious fervor?

While we might not yet know the answer to such questions, it is clear that animals are capable of learning some complex behaviors. Sagan points, for example, to the famous work of Beatrice and Robert Gardner, who taught American sign language to the chimpanzees named Washoe and Lana. The Gardners learned that while the vocal architecture of chimpanzees are ill suited for human speech, it did not mean that they were incapable of communicating with us.

In fact, after learning a good number of basic signs, the chimpanzees began to combine and recombine gestures in nontrivial ways. Washoe combined signs, for instance, to say “waterbird” when she eyed upon a duck in the pond for the first time in her life. Likewise, Lana combined the sign for the color “orange” with the sign for “apple” when she spotted a bright spherical fruit that she had never before seen.

For another example, Sagan turns to a troop of Old World monkeys called macaques on the beaches of a southern Japanese island. In this experiment, mischievous researchers littered the sandy shores with grains of wheat. You must realize that it is a real chore for any human or monkey to separate grain from sand for food. Still, as a persistent lot, the macaques partook in this laborious enterprise. Hour upon hour, they picked and cleaned with every meal and every day.

But after some time, an entrepreneurial macaque named Imo, whether by mistake or anger or genius, tossed a handful of grain and sand into the salty water. Upon her realization that wheat floats and sand sinks, Imo began to eat better than the rest. And while the older monkeys clung to their ways, the youngsters recognized the benefits of her innovation. After a generation or two, all macaques on this part of the island, Sagan notes, became water-sifters. An arresting instance of monkey see, monkey do.

We are also well aware of the complex rituals and traditions that characterize some primate societies. Sagan dedicates a good number of paragraphs in his book, for example, to describe the practices of gothic squirrel monkeys in the canopies of the tropical rainforests of South America. The male monkeys, in particular, are a rather daring and carnal bunch. Whether it is to court a female, or to assert one’s dominance, the male’s grand plan is always the same. He will spread his thighs and thrust his erect phallus into the air, all the while screaming and screeching with unrelenting abandon. And sometimes, the ritual works. Sagan is right to say of course that most humans today will find such behavior at the dining table impolite. But it is not at all strange for a squirrel monkey living in a deeply hierarchical society.

Perhaps we are fortunate then that the quantity and quality of the neural connections inside our brains allow us to select for gentler modes for self-expression. Today, we profess in stories, write in letters, and affect with smiles, hugs and kisses. “In a way, the map of the motor cortex”, Sagan writes—the region in our frontal lobe that helps with controlling and executing goal-directed movements—“is an accurate portrait of our humanity.”

Further still, our frontal lobes have evolved to undertake higher executive functions like planmaking, logical thinking, and problem solving. But “the price we pay for anticipation of the future”, Sagan notes, “is anxiety about it.” We live incessantly and hurriedly, forever in a state of worry about our livelihoods and standing among others. Indeed, it is in response to our anxieties and anticipations that we devise an ever growing myriad of doctrines, from magics to scriptures to legalese. All of this in attempts to understand, regulate and organize ourselves within a harsh, uncertain and unrelenting world.

Still, we must wonder how much of ourselves remains akin to that of squirrel monkeys, for humans are rarely as poetic or logical or rational as we presume ourselves to be. Many go about their affairs without pause under a rulership of thoughtless motivations and emotions.  

From hunger and arousal to our fight-and-flight responses, we know that the brain’s limbic system is involved in our emotional functions and survival instincts. The little almond-shaped amygdala that resides inside is especially central to our feelings of pleasure, anxiety, anger, and fear.

Studies find, Sagan notes, that “electrical discharges in the limbic system sometimes result in symptoms similar to those of psychoses… [or] psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs.” Meanwhile, “electrical stimulation of the amygdala in placid domestic animals can rouse them to almost unbelievable states of fear or frenzy.”

I cannot help but feel uneasy knowing that the line that separates us from the wild, the manic, and the mindless is wafer-thin. But Sagan goes further. He wonders how much of human society itself is limbic or reptilian even. You must agree, after all, that much of human culture, bureaucracy, and politics is hierarchical, territorial, ritualistic, and aggressive.

Despite the scientific and cultural boons that arose with the Ages of Reason and Information, people everywhere continue to find false comfort and hope in limbic doctrines that are “mystical and occult… [and] impervious to rational discussion [and disproof]”, the scientist laments.

Sagan observes a metaphor for our predicament in The Phaedrus by Plato. In the dialogue, his protagonist “Socrates likens the human soul to a chariot drawn by two horses—one black, one white—pulling in different directions and weakly controlled by a charioteer.” Sagan suggests that the human brain and society is just like that. Disparate yet integrated, always in tension and connection.

Indeed, we are familiar, for instance, with how the logical and rational parts of the self can sometimes override its cruder instincts and motivations. Yet the reverse is just as true and common. And in a similar way, our cultures, institutions, and societies too can express and repress the best and worst parts of us. For this reason, Sagan wonders if Hollywood’s obsession with sex and violence is simply a manifestation and reflection of our still primitive roots.

Of course, all of this is an oversimplification. Nothing in life is ever easy to describe. Still, the Phaedrus chariot, I think, is a useful symbol of our character. While the embellishment is sometimes apt, Sagan “[does] not mean [to say] that [our] neocortex is not functioning at all.” Rather, it is “our plasticity, our long childhood, that prevents a slavish adherence to genetically preprogrammed behavior in human beings more than in any other species.” The only hope for humanity then is in learning and education. But behind the backdrop of our cosmic calendar, the human self and society is certainly still in embryo.

As Sagan writes:
“The world is very old, and human beings are very young… [If we] imagine the fifteen-billion-year lifetime of the universe… compressed into the span of a single year… It is disconcerting to find that in such a cosmic year the Earth does not condense out of interstellar matter until early September; dinosaurs emerge on Christmas Eve; flowers arise on December 28th; and men and women originate at 10:30 P.M. on New Year’s Eve. All of recorded history occupies the last ten seconds of December 31; and the time from the waning of the Middle Ages to the present occupies little more than one second… It is only in the last day of the Cosmic Calendar that substantial intellectual abilities have evolved on the planet Earth. The coordinated functioning of both cerebral hemispheres is the tool Nature has provided for our survival. [But] we are unlikely to survive if we do not make full and creative use of our human intelligence.” .

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On Robson Street in Downtown Vancouver. Autumn of 2018.

Robson Street is a major southeast-northwest thoroughfare in downtown and West End of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Its core commercial blocks from Burrard Street to Jervis were also known as Robsonstrasse. Its name honours John Robson, a major figure in British Columbia's entry into the Canadian Confederation, and Premier of the province from 1889 to 1892. Robson Street starts at BC Place Stadium near the north shore of False Creek, then runs northwest past Vancouver Library Square, Robson Square and the Vancouver Art Gallery, coming to an end at Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park.

As of 2006, the city of Vancouver overall had the fifth most expensive retail rental rates in the world, averaging US$135 per square foot per year, citywide. Robson Street tops Vancouver with its most expensive locations renting for up to US$200 per square foot per year. In 2006, both Robson Street and the Mink Mile on Bloor Street in Toronto were the 22nd most expensive streets in the world, with rents of $208 per square feet. In 2007, the Mink Mile and Robson slipped to 25th in the world with an average of $198 per square feet. The price of each continues to grow with Vancouver being Burberry's first Canadian location and Toronto's Yorkville neighbourhood (which is bounded on the south side by Bloor) now commanding rents of $300 per square foot.

In 1895, train tracks were laid down the street, supporting a concentration of shops and restaurants. From the early to middle-late 20th century, and especially after significant immigration from postwar Germany, the northwest end of Robson Street was known as a centre of German culture and commerce in Vancouver, earning the nickname Robsonstrasse, even among non-Germans (this name lives on in the Robsonstrasse Hotel on the street). At one time, the city had placed streetsigns reading "Robsonstrasse" though these were placed after the German presence in the area had largely vanished.

Robson Street was featured on an old edition of the Canadian Monopoly board as one of the two most expensive properties.

 

Anime Architecture – All the Anime

https://blog.alltheanime.com/anime-architecture/

If you were hoping for Anime Architecture at the House of Illustration to show a futurists’ view of architecture, you’ll be disappointed. It’s the subtitle, Backgrounds of Japan, where the show’s true focus lies. This is not an exhibition of design, but rather of scenery, highlighting the background illustrator’s craft. It is built around the works of Production I.G, showcasing production materials from Patlabor: The Movie (1989), Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Metropolis (2001).

The exhibition is organised roughly in the order of production process, beginning with Haruhiko Higami’s photographic reference. Higami, a protégé of director Mamoru Oshii, seems to have pioneered the role of the ‘concept photographer’. A step beyond the mere provision of photo reference, Higami deploys his camera to compose scenes and spaces within the movie narrative, whether it’s the canal montage of Patlabor 2, or the hybrid old/new Hong Kong cityscapes of Ghost in the Shell. These images are shot in stark monochrome for the benefit of the colour designer.

The next step in production is the layouts of backgrounds. Takashi Watabe is a major star here, having worked on titles from Akira (1988) through to the reboot of Evangelion. What’s striking about his work is not just his set design, but the selection of camera angles and the use of single and two-point perspective. Although these days Watabe uses computer models to compose his backgrounds, the exhibit has many examples of his hand-drawn layouts. Watabe is a fine draughtsman, his worlds composed of ruled lines in mechanical pencil where structural masses pop out from areas of shaded detail. These are the closest things to architectural drawings, particularly when we examine the deco stylings of his backgrounds for Metropolis. The Metropolis project also shows us Watabe’s construction of a backdrop for a multi-plane camera, in which the canyons of a skyscraper cityscape are arranged and move to create a sense of depth. Sadly, the exhibit shows us the layout components but not the composed scene.

The final stage of the process is the background painting, which is represented by the work of the designer and painter Hiromasa Ogura. When one considers that these works were intended to be shown on the big screen, it’s striking how small the paintings are. Ogura’s backdrops are exemplars of the miniaturist’s art, created in gouache and with fine detailing layered over areas of wash. Many pieces hare are taken from the languid night-time montages of Ghost in the Shell, and are lit in blues and purples, with light dry brushstrokes generating the glows around light sources. There’s little futurism in many of these scenes, except maybe for washed-out hints of glass-tower cityscapes in the distance. Rather, the Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor scenes are strikingly contemporary, using Haruhiko Higami’s photos to create scenes of weathered housing and decayed structures, in some cases to be held in long, contemplative shots with little or no animation.

These are backgrounds working harder than they ever have before, not only to be a frame for the character action but to tell stories in and of themselves. Mamoru Oshii is absent as an artist from this exhibition, but his fingerprints are everywhere, in the form of his dog stamp used to approve layouts and other art. The exhibition seems to suggest this use of scenery as a movie character is a modern innovation, with Oshii as the pioneer. Though one would imagine that Akira and Wings of Honneamise (1987), both of which Takashi Watabe worked on, were there long before.

A looping video shows some of these the backgrounds as they appeared in the movies. Oddly, the loop shows a scene from Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2008) not referenced anywhere else in the exhibition, that incorporates extensive use of computer-generated backgrounds. This may be the elephant in the room. The use of CGI backdrops gives far more flexibility in lighting, the selection of camera angles and even permits tracking cameras. Old-school painted scenes, such as those of Ogura’s, represent a fading pre-digital craft. For an exhibition of such craftsmanship, the Anime Architecture show, though small, is worth the visit.

Anime Architecture: Backgrounds of Japan is at the House of Illustration until 10th September.