Imagine that: someone who's been trained for decades to respond to sudden emergency situations and organize communications/chain of command, and is actually capable at all of the above. How did he ever get promoted with this administration in charge?

Well, apparently he impressed everybody who dealt with him in the crisis. The cream occasionally rises to the top.

The cream occasionally rises to the top.

Yeah, as long as they don't leave it there to spoil.

In all actuality, the military promotion system is probably one of the least affected by croniism and nepotism you can find. It still happens, but the Pendleton Act did it's best to put a crimp in it. The biggest problem I saw in the military is that there a still a lot of discriminatory stereotypes in it that can hold people back.

I read the Narnia books when I was a young teen. I was about halfway through one of them - don't recall the exact passage that did it - when I realized they were a Christian allegory. It took all the enjoyment out of them for me. I felt like I'd been manipulated.

It will be interesting to see the Narnia movie when it comes out. As a 10-year old, I didn't see any of the Christian imagery at all. I'll be curious to see how the screenwriter deals with it. Whether they emphasize it or try to eliminate it or just kind of let it ride where it's at. Also, I'll be curious to see how I'll react to it. Even once I could see it, it didn't annoy me or anything and I don't, by any means, consider myself "Christian." I really am pretty oblivious that way.

Thanks, Nilly and Tim. My ages-ago post about "Moon" comes back to me now as an attempt, however murky, to point out that the value of "Moon" had more to do with people than it did with political philosophy. The political philosophy stuff was just an element of the setting, to me.

Holding my tongue on the Moon remarks, because you have all enjoyed my "novels are more fun to read than macroeconomics lectures" rant.

And Hem's Cradle Song at the end?

OMG! I have seen Hem in concert, and hung out with them after. A friend of mine runs their website! I am thisclose to all manner of fame now.

(They are the only band I have seen who can play without any drummer at all. I asked, and they do have a drummer sometimes, just not on this particular performance date. They were just back from Britain -- and Ireland? I disremember -- and were very tired.)

"novels are more fun to read than macroeconomics lectures"

Yes, but history is more fun than novels, at least if you pick the right history.

Well, we can't all be Thomas Carlyle, but it's worth aspiring to.

(I am sure there are economists who are rousing lecturers too, but I don't know their names.)

Nutty, I love Hem. I've seen them live twice in Dublin; the last time was probably the tour they'd just come back from when you saw them. I think they'd just released Eveningland? Great, great band.