Three things I read this week

Shogun, this is marketing, SR-71 speed check

Before we get into the reading I’d like to share something new with you. I’ve started making YouTube videos based on my articles. I already have nine videos up on my page, and I plan to release a new offering once a week.

To kick things off here’s a video about a miserable guy named Joe who is trapped in the Matrix. This is quickly proving to be my most popular video to date. I also uploaded a review of Rob Henderson’s recently released memoir.

If you’d rather watch than read I think you’ll enjoy these 🤙 they’ll also get better over time as I become a Jedi monk of the movie editor.

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At last I finished Shogun, it only took me a few months… I’ve read that this book has sold more than fifteen million copies, which is kind of insane but the quality justifies the sales. When I was reading reviews prior to buying Shogun there was one person who wrote, “I didn’t read this book, I experienced it.” That sounds exactly like what happened to me…

A few thoughts on this 1,200 page masterpiece…

1 - As I wrote a few weeks ago, Mariko is a masterful example of a strong female character. Hollywood writers take note!

2 - I have a pressing desire to buy a samurai sword.

3 - The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang is a book that you shouldn’t even think about reading unless you’re comfortable plumbing the foulest depths of human depravity. Brutality, inhumanity, and a sickening bloodlust so staggering that it makes the word bloodlust into something other than hyperbole.

What the Japanese did to the Chinese at Nanking was arguably worse (qualitatively, not quantitatively) than what the Nazis did to the Jews. And one of the questions you might reasonably ask is why? Why did the Japanese soldiers laugh their way through a genocide?

I think I found at least part of an answer in reading Shogun. The samurai culture described in vivid detail dictated that people at the bottom rungs of society aren’t even worthy of basic human rights. In one of Shogun’s first chapters a main character beheads a villager because the man failed to bow properly. This event is treated with all the emotional significance of dropping an egg on the floor while you’re baking a cake. That man’s life was worth a broken egg.

Extrapolating forward, to the extent that the samurai culture survived from feudal Japan into the 20th century, I can imagine the Japanese soldiers being raised to believe that the Chinese weren’t even people. The rape and slaughter of the citizens of Nanking was nothing more, to the soldiers, than clearing out a vermin infestation.

The Rape of Nanking turned me off Japan for a number of years. The event was hell on earth, which is bad enough, but the denial is what really bothered me. Unlike Germany which publicly atones for the Holocaust, many people in Japan still deny that the mass murder ever happened. This I find unforgivable, as there seems to be something distinctly awful about doing the unspeakable and then never living up to it afterward.

And on that cheery note, here are some memes to wash the mass slaughter out of your mind. Also, please read Shogun if you have the patience for a long book. It was fantastic, and shouldn’t be tainted by my diatribe on Nanking.

What America will look like after the upcoming civil war is finished 👇

1 - Narrative land

As I’ve said before, my most fervent wish for society is that people would think more. You don’t have to think what I think! I just wish there was more brain engagement going around.

On that theme I thought this article from Spaceman Spiff was pretty neat. You remember those people pulling down posters of kidnapped Israeli children? When asked why they were doing it many of the protestors couldn’t even articulate what was motivating them. It’s like they’d been programmed with a goal and were executing a script without any comprehension of their actions.

What a weird world we live in.

There are a growing number of videos online of people challenging activists in a polite manner, asking basic questions about their views on the subjects they are protesting. It is striking how many are unable to articulate their position when questioned.

2 - Marketing

Reading Seth Godin is like watching an interesting documentary that totally blows your mind and two months later you can’t remember what it was about. Something having to do with turtles, or maybe it was French cheese..?

I read This is Marketing because as a Substack writer at least 30% of my job is finding creative ways of getting my articles in front of people who’d like to read them. So what message did I find in this book? Godin claims that marketing isn’t about slick tricks or stunts. Marketing is creating an exceptional product that solves people’s problems. If you’re struggling to gain traction you have a product problem, not a marketing problem. Authenticity sells itself, Godin tells us.

Yeah, fair enough. Although I think this book could have been 50% shorter and still conveyed the same message.

Of more immediate value was Godin’s entreaty to share more emotions. That sounds like the opposite of what I’m trying to do with this Substack. Our society is drowning in a tsunami of emotions, the last thing we need is more touchy feelies. But within a certain context Godin’s point is sound. I think my reviews would be better if I were more diligent in sharing how a book made me feel, rather than just explaining the facts.

So to inaugurate our ghastly descent into emotionville: This is Marketing made me feel like I just ate a deep fried rooster but the fowl never found its way to my gut. The hunger persists. And yes, this 👇 is what I look like in real life.

3 - SR-71 Speed Check

Story originally from here.

There were a lot of things we couldn't do in an SR-71, but we were the fastest guys on the block and loved reminding our fellow aviators of this fact. People often asked us if, because of this fact, it was fun to fly the jet. Fun would not be the first word I would use to describe flying this plane. Intense, maybe. Even cerebral. But there was one day in our Sled experience when we would have to say that it was pure fun to be the fastest guys out there, at least for a moment.

It occurred when Walt and I were flying our final training sortie. We needed 100 hours in the jet to complete our training and attain Mission Ready status. Somewhere over Colorado we had passed the century mark. We had made the turn in Arizona and the jet was performing flawlessly. My gauges were wired in the front seat and we were starting to feel pretty good about ourselves, not only because we would soon be flying real missions but because we had gained a great deal of confidence in the plane in the past ten months. Ripping across the barren deserts 80,000 feet below us, I could already see the coast of California from the Arizona border. I was, finally, after many humbling months of simulators and study, ahead of the jet. I was beginning to feel a bit sorry for Walter in the back seat. There he was, with no really good view of the incredible sights before us, tasked with monitoring four different radios. This was good practice for him for when we began flying real missions, when a priority transmission from headquarters could be vital. It had been difficult, too, for me to relinquish control of the radios, as during my entire flying career I had controlled my own transmissions. But it was part of the division of duties in this plane and I had adjusted to it. I still insisted on talking on the radio while we were on the ground, however. Walt was so good at many things, but he couldn't match my expertise at sounding smooth on the radios, a skill that had been honed sharply with years in fighter squadrons where the slightest radio miscue was grounds for beheading. He understood that and allowed me that luxury.

Just to get a sense of what Walt had to contend with, I pulled the radio toggle switches and monitored the frequencies along with him. The predominant radio chatter was from Los Angeles Center, far below us, controlling daily traffic in their sector. While they had us on their scope (albeit briefly), we were in uncontrolled airspace and normally would not talk to them unless we needed to descend into their airspace. We listened as the shaky voice of a lone Cessna pilot asked Center for a readout of his ground speed. Center replied: "November Charlie 175, I'm showing you at ninety knots on the ground."

Now the thing to understand about Center controllers, was that whether they were talking to a rookie pilot in a Cessna, or to Air Force One, they always spoke in the exact same, calm, deep, professional, tone that made one feel important. I referred to it as the "Houston Center voice." I have always felt that after years of seeing documentaries on this country's space program and listening to the calm and distinct voice of the Houston controllers, that all other controllers since then wanted to sound like that, and that they basically did. And it didn't matter what sector of the country we would be flying in, it always seemed like the same guy was talking. Over the years that tone of voice had become somewhat of a comforting sound to pilots everywhere. Conversely, over the years, pilots always wanted to ensure that, when transmitting, they sounded like Chuck Yeager, or at least like John Wayne. Better to die than sound bad on the radios.

Just moments after the Cessna's inquiry, a Twin Beech piped up on frequency, in a rather superior tone, asking for his ground speed. "I have you at one hundred and twenty-five knots of ground speed." Boy, I thought, the Beechcraft really must think he is dazzling his Cessna brethren. Then out of the blue, a navy F-18 pilot out of NAS Lemoore came up on frequency. You knew right away it was a Navy jock because he sounded very cool on the radios. "Center, Dusty 52 ground speed check". Before Center could reply, I'm thinking to myself, hey, Dusty 52 has a ground speed indicator in that million-dollar cockpit, so why is he asking Center for a readout? Then I got it, ol' Dusty here is making sure that every bug smasher from Mount Whitney to the Mojave knows what true speed is. He's the fastest dude in the valley today, and he just wants everyone to know how much fun he is having in his new Hornet. And the reply, always with that same, calm, voice, with more distinct alliteration than emotion: "Dusty 52, Center, we have you at 620 on the ground."

And I thought to myself, is this a ripe situation, or what? As my hand instinctively reached for the mic button, I had to remind myself that Walt was in control of the radios. Still, I thought, it must be done - in mere seconds we'll be out of the sector and the opportunity will be lost. That Hornet must die, and die now. I thought about all of our Sim training and how important it was that we developed well as a crew and knew that to jump in on the radios now would destroy the integrity of all that we had worked toward becoming. I was torn.

Somewhere, 13 miles above Arizona, there was a pilot screaming inside his space helmet. Then, I heard it. The click of the mic button from the back seat. That was the very moment that I knew Walter and I had become a crew. Very professionally, and with no emotion, Walter spoke: "Los Angeles Center, Aspen 20, can you give us a ground speed check?" There was no hesitation, and the replay came as if was an everyday request. "Aspen 20, I show you at one thousand eight hundred and forty-two knots, across the ground."

I think it was the forty-two knots that I liked the best, so accurate and proud was Center to deliver that information without hesitation, and you just knew he was smiling. But the precise point at which I knew that Walt and I were going to be really good friends for a long time was when he keyed the mic once again to say, in his most fighter-pilot-like voice: "Ah, Center, much thanks, we're showing closer to nineteen hundred on the money."

For a moment Walter was a god. And we finally heard a little crack in the armor of the Houston Center voice, when L.A.came back with, "Roger that Aspen, Your equipment is probably more accurate than ours. You boys have a good one." It all had lasted for just moments, but in that short, memorable sprint across the southwest, the Navy had been flamed, all mortal airplanes on freq were forced to bow before the King of Speed, and more importantly, Walter and I had crossed the threshold of being a crew. A fine day's work. We never heard another transmission on that frequency all the way to the coast. For just one day, it truly was fun being the fastest guys out there.

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