Out of Pod Experience

Every mission accomplished.
Matthew B. Ridgway

No ground gained was ever relinquished.

“The hard decisions are not the ones you make in the heat of battle. For harder to make are those involved in speaking your mind about some harebrained scheme which proposes to commit troops to action under conditions where failure is almost certain and the only results will be the needless sacrifice of priceless lives.”
― Matthew B. Ridgway

And yes, the B. is for Bunker.

Your job is to point that rifle into
the other guy's face and shoot him
dead.


Leadership
Statements
and Quotes

...
1 November 1985
UNCLASSIFIED

(The soldier must be rooted in the past to understand the present so that he may project
himself into the future.)
1956

“But every military leader, from the lowest to the highest, owes it to the men whose lives are at his disposal to speak
out clearly when he feels that a serious mistake is about to be made.”

...
“Even were he (the enemy) to be rendered quiescent for a time by endless bombardment, it would still be necessary to
meet him (the enemy) face to face on the ground to subdue him and to keep him subdued.”

“We forgot that our diplomacy could be no stronger than the military muscle we maintained to support it.”
“No man in uniform, be he private or five–star general, may decide for himself whether an order is consonant with his
personal views. While the loyalty he owes his superiors is reciprocated with equal force in the loyalty owed him from
above, the authority of his superiors is not open to question.”

“The sacrifices we have made, and those we shall yet support, are not offered vicariously for others, but in our own
direct defense.”

...

“These are the things for which we fight. Never have members of any military command had a greater challenge than
we, or a finer opportunity to show ourselves and our people at their best—and thus to do honor to the profession of
arms, and to those brave men who bred us.”
––GEN Matthew Ridgway


On the need to read history: "We don’t emphasize this enough in our service schools, even the War College. My advice to any young officer is read — read — read. And learn from the successes of the great ones and their failures."

On the nature of man: "Man is the most dangerous predator on Earth. It is bred in his bones. He has had to fight for a living since time immemorial, and he always will. That’s human nature and it’s not going to change."

Why he declines to talk to soldiers from stages or platforms: "I always disliked standing above people. I’m no better than they are. In rank, yes; in experience, yes; but not as a man…When reviewing troops I would never permit them to raise a reviewing stand. I always stood there on the field, six to eight feet from the right flank of the unit going by. Then I could look into the eyes of the men going by. Looking into their eyes tells you something — and it tells them something, too."

A frog in a well doesn't know about the great ocean.
-Japanese proverb

"If I can do it, it's not art!" - Myself

5 | Miyamoto Musashi's Wisdom Expressed Through Conor McGregor
precision beats power
timing beats speed

"If you can make your opponent flinch, you have
already won." -Miyamoto Musashi


Precision & Timing Explained | Conor McGregor & Lyoto Machida
"Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything."
-Wyatt Earp


MIYAMOTO MUSASHI 宮本武蔵. Dokkodo. The way of walking alone. 21 LIFE PRINCIPLES

The Way of Walking Alone
Dokkodo

The 21 precept
Of dokkodo

1. Accept everything
just the way it is

2. Do not seek pleasure
for your own sake

3. Do not, under any
circumstances
depend on a
partial feeling

4. Think lightly
of yourself
and deeply of
the world

5. Be detached from
desire your whole
life long

6. Do not regret what
you have done

7. Never be jealous

8. Never let yourself be
saddened by a separation

9. Resentment and complaint
are appropriate neither
for oneself or
others

10. Do not let yourself
be guided by the feeling
of lust or love

11. In all things have
no preferences

12. Be indifferent
to where you live

13. Do not pursue the
taste of good food

14. Do not hold on to
possessions you no
longer need

15. Do not act
following
customary beliefs

16. Do not collect weapons
or practice with weapons
beyond what is useful

17. Do not fear death

18. Do not seek to possess
either goods or fiefs
for your old age

19. Respect Buddha
and the Gods
without counting
on their help

20. You may abandon
your own body
but you must
preserve your
honour

21. Never stray
from The Way.


It may seem difficult
at first, but everything
is difficult at
first.


Adapting Morphology to Multiple Tasks in Evolved Virtual Creatures


Evolved Electrophysiological Soft Robots

That's some wisdom right there. A tale, about my Japanese wife's samurai ancestor who started on a solo "sword quest":
-He left Edo (old Tokyo). He encountered a person, which was actually a fox (kitsune) which had assumed human form. He detected that it was a tricky and dangerous kitsune. So, he lifted a big stone over his head to show his strength, and smacktalked the kitsune about it. So the kitsune lifted a bigger stone over its head, and smacktalked about it. So our sword quest warrior lifted an even bigger one, threw it down, and smackswaggered around. And so, the kitsune hefted a huge rock over its head... which it couldn't handle, and pinned it to the ground, and suffocated it.

-Continuing on his quest, our hero reached a farming village. There he met a beautiful girl. She was so beautiful, lovely and enchanting that he married her. And settled down in the village and became a farmer or something. And so ended our hero's solo sword quest.

-(Well I guess the happy ending is that he and his beautiful, lovely and enchanting bride produced kids that became me wife's ancestors. But nobody in the family every talks about that. The story always ends with, "He reached the first village, met a girl and-- THE END. Ha ha ha!")

"To ride the wind with cool and breezy skill"
-Chuang Tzu

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company - Mark Twain

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it - Mark Twain

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars - Mark Twain

Spock Quote on Pirates:
heard from
Funny Spock Lines and Moments from Season 2
at the 3 min 11 mark to 3:40


Kirk:
3:11
I always thought Spock was a pirate at heart.

Spock:
3:13
Indeed gentlemen.
3:15
May I point out that I had opportunity to observe
your counterparts here quite closely.
3:19
They were brutal, savage, unprincipled, uncivilized, traitorous.
3:24
In every way, splendid examples of homo sapiens,
the very flower of humanity.
3:31
I find them quite refreshing.

Kirk:
3:36
I'm not sure, but I think we've been insulted.

McCoy:
3:38
I'm sure.

Will Munny: "All right now, I'm comin' out. Any man I see out there, I'm gonna kill him. Any son of a b*tch that takes a shot at me, I'm not only gonna kill him. I'm gonna kill his wife, all his friends, burn his damn house down!"

Badass.

"The presidency has many problems, but boredom is the least of them." - myself, many thousands of years ago

iiiii'm ready! iiiii'm ready! iiiii'm ready! iiiii'm ready!