When we think of the word siege in military terms, images of fortified walled cities in antiquity surrounded by huge armies for months come to mind. The reasons for besieging a city are many and varied in the annals of human history. Most of the time, the reason was obvious: neither the attackers nor defenders could gain the upper hand, and a months or years long siege would result from the stalemate. In antiquity, it was far too easy for the besiegers to become besieged themselves; sometimes from a relieving army allied with the defenders, sometimes from disease, and all too often, from the onset of winter. So it was not often that an attacking army would choose to besiege a city when they could gain the upper hand in combat easily.
From the attackers' perspective, the purpose of a siege was simple: surround the city, thereby cutting off the lines of communication, supply, and reinforcement from the outside, and eventually, the defenders would capitulate or starve in defiance.
With the evolution of warfare into the modern era, the concept of a walled city became obsolete and sieges have become a thing of the past. (The German siege of Stalingrad in World War II being the last siege in the traditional sense of the word that I can recall.) That being said, however, I realized the other day that, in fact, the idea of the siege is actually very much alive and well in the strategic planning of wars today. The difference now, however, is that the siege is no longer merely applied to one city, but rather an entire enemy state at once.
I speak, of course, of the deceptively benevolent sounding "economic sanctions" deployed by today's major powers against their enemies. If the purpose of a siege was to cut off the lifeblood of a city, then the purpose of economic sanctions is, of course, to cut off the lifeblood of an entire nation. Economic sanctions are the modern equivalent of the siege.
When economic sanctions are levied against an enemy, the United Nations is very careful to direct them against the government, since it is not politically correct to say "we are going to starve these people out." But that is, in fact, exactly what is going on. While economic sanctions are usually levied to achieve some political outcome, a reasonable person cannot help but conclude that the only people who are actually hurt by economic sanctions are regular citizens. It's simple: if you are the despotic leader of some small aggressor country, and the world body has decided to cut you off, are you going to let yourself and your friends starve or are you going to keep on eating while some poor people at the bottom of your society starve instead?
So what is the point of the modern siege? Is it to soften up the defenders while the attackers muster the strength to overcome their defenses and invade? Sort of.
Since we all know that militarily, the major world powers need absolutely no softening of their enemies to make short work of them, the real purpose of economic sanctions, then, must be to provide political gain. And in fact, this is exactly what economic sanctions are for: it is unpopular in the modern world for powers to run roughshod over enemies, regardless of who they are or how deserving they are. So it is necessary to put on the farce for a while, giving the despot a "chance" to change their evil ways, before the major powers go in and run roughshod over the pathetic defenders.
The problem with this modern siege is the same problem the ancients had: besieged people are not happy people. How can it be a surprise, then, that after a decade long siege of Iraq, the people haven't rushed out and embraced their conquerors? Indeed, the program of economic sanctions, this modern-day equivalent of the siege, has created a whole generation of fighters who will fight the only way they have any chance of not being slaughtered en masse: through terrorism.
On Saturday, I summited Dragontail Peak (8840'+). Obviously, it's been an incredibly slow year in terms of mountaineering, but I finally have something to write about other than rants against the telcos. After being an instructor for a basic climbing class in the Spring, I took some time off for family, barely staying in shape to attempt Mt. Rainier via the Emmons route last month. Unfortunately, I tweaked my knee a couple of weeks before I was to make that attempt, on (of all hikes) Mt. Si. The injury wasn't particularly obvious at the time, but the pain got worse as time went on, and it was one of those things where it wasn't caused by one big event. It was probably caused by descending too fast having not been out on the trails for a good couple of months.
In any case, I made the hike up to Bandera Mountain last week with a couple of friends from out of town, and although the knee was painful, I decided it was good enough to make the attempt on Dragontail as long as I took it easy.
We got to the trailhead at about 10:00 on Friday and proceeded to set up tents for the "nap" until 4:15. By just after 5, we were on the trail. The first part of this climb is along the same trail that one takes to Colchuck Peak. Just about 8, we met up with the other half of our team, which had spent the night at Colchuck Lake thanks to their backcountry camping permit.
Being my first "real" climb of the year, I was really apprehensive in some ways. I kept thinking that I'd forgotten some vital piece of gear or that I wouldn't be prepared. And of course, in the back of my mind was the constant thought that my knee problems only really seemed to kick in on descent. So what if I made it up to 8840' and couldn't come down?
On the other hand, it felt great to be climbing with these guys again, especially once we slogged our way up the loose scree and rocks of Asgaard Pass. Once at the top of the pass, we hit a snowy bowl and gaitered up, switching the poles for ice axes. We also filtered some water. As it turns out, my paranoia about supplies was a good thing, because I even packed the water filter. Considering the heat, there was no way we could have had enough water without it. I polished off about 7 liters during the day.
Surprisingly, I didn't really feel tired at any time during the climb. The snow was welcome relief for feet, and the climbing continued steadily. The nice thing about this route was that we were able to climb in shade all the way up Asgaard Pass, taking the heat only after we got into the snow bowl. We made the col and then scrambled up a few more rocks to the summit after taking a quick break. We made the summit at about 12:30. It was a clear, beautiful day, and aside from a little smog or smoke from fires, we were able to take in a gorgeous panorama that included Mts. Rainier, Adams, Baker, Stuart, and Glacier Peak as well.
Those of us who had overnight permits then continued on to climb Witches Tower, and one of them soloed Little Annapurna as well. I was a bit jealous, but soon put that aside as I concentrated on the descent.
Now the descent... and the big question of the knee. As it turned out, I was able to descend with just a constant pain throughout the afternoon. It never really got terrible, but neither did it totally go away. I took it very easy, and I have to admit that it was due to this slow pace that our descent took just as long as the ascent, which, I'm sure, was frustrating to the others.
Sadly, I even got to practice my ice axe arrest as I slipped while plunge stepping down the bowl, and then later, again, when I let a glissade get just a bit out of control.
Strangely enough, the knee actually seemed to do better on rocky steps than descending along the trail. I made some adjustments to how I used the poles and that also seemed to help. Coming down Asgaard, the main challenges were the loose rock and the overbearing sun. The temps got up over 90 F in Leavenworth, and while it probably wasn't that bad up in the mountains, it sure felt that bad...
The only other challenge along the way was the bugs. The mosquitos were out in force, and no amount of bug juice solved the problem entirely. We all ended up with our share of bites.
We made the car at just after 8 PM, which seemed like forever, but at the same time, I kind of had a feeling it was take that long given my knee. It was about the same as we'd taken on Colchuck last year, though that involved some crampons and hard snow up the very steep Colchuck Glacier.
All in all a great climb. At this point I only have one other climb planned for the rest of the season, but maybe that will change. Who knows...
Years and years ago, I implored the browser development community to come up with a web browser that gave me, the user, control over cookies, pop-ups, and other hijackings like window resizing or movement. Mozilla was the first browser that answered not one, but all of my requests, and I'm happy to say that to this day, I still use the descendant of Mozilla, Firefox.
Now I realize that hardware manufacturers are not remotely as innovative or responsive as the open-source community that gave us Mozilla and Firefox, but I am going to try the same thing for a mobile phone. I'm tired of being negative towards my mobile phone and the industry without so much as providing them a blueprint for what I want. So I present my wish list: the perfect phone.
The Perfect Phone
- No larger than 3" x 1" x 0.4" (if shaped cylindrically, a maximum diameter of 0.5") closed.
- Flip or slide mechanism - key guard is stupid, just give me the flip. The flip is the ideal form factor for a phone. It serves the functions of key guard and screen protector while keeping the form factor reasonable. The challenge with the flip is that it has to be well-designed and well-constructed to endure the mechanism strain over the phone's lifetime. This is easily addressed with good materials, engineering, and production.
- If shaped cylindrically, it should look like a short pen when closed. Instead of a flip, I "click" the phone like a click pen and voila, it extends by a couple of inches so that you can see a small screen (say from 3" to 5").
- World compatible (ie. I can turn it on and use it on any digital mobile network - whether that means Quad band or tri-mode or whatever, I don't care. Stop muddling the issue with jargon and just give me what I want.)
- 5 hours of talk time, 100 hours of standby time minimum
- 8 kB of memory, maximum - why maximum? So the only thing I can put in there is names and phone numbers. If I wanted any more features, I'd get a smartphone.
- 1-bit color display capable of displaying a 20 letter name and 20 digit phone number simultaneously. I don't care if this is implemented with a series of 7-segment LEDs or if it's implemented with a 320x72 LCD. Again, stop muddling the issue with jargon and "features" and just give me what I want. The display must be readable in direct sunlight and the brightness must either automatically adjust or be easily adjustable so as to not blind me while I am drunk dialing in the middle of the cold dark night.
- The speaker driver must be made of high quality materials, such as molybdenum. Really what I'm looking for here is high fidelity sound. The mobile network is bad enough sound-quality-wise, the last thing I need is to have my phone contributing even more degredation to the signal before it reaches my ear. Again, the phone must be built solidly enough that even if I turn it up a LOT the phone won't start to rattle like those cheap car stereo installs where every time the bass comes in their whole deck vibrates audibly to everyone in a two block radius.
- Speakerphone would be nice, but really I could give less a shit if the regular phone was high quality and fidelity.
- No camera, no internet, no Bluetooth, nothing. Really, I don't even care to see a mic/headset hands-free port. When you're in the car, drive. Talk when you're sitting on the shitter.
- In fact, no ports at all. Not even power. Yes, you heard me. I want this phone to operate on either 1 AA or 2 AAA batteries. I am tired of having ten million different batteries. We have a standard for batteries, and they're even rechargeable now. At every opportunity, I've chosen the appliance that uses standard batteries over proprietary batteries. This makes me a more efficient user of resources and energy, to say nothing of the impact if society as a whole would wake up to this stupidity.
- Since it has no ports, the phone should be waterproof to a depth of 50'. This is optional, but it would be nice.
- Keys must be labeled for number and letter dialing. I can't believe I have to fucking ask for this "feature" which has been standard on every phone I have ever seen in my entire life except for those costing more than $200.
- Clock, which is set from the mobile network's signal but can maintain the time without a signal. One alarm.
- Classy, high-quality materials. Why does every "simple" phone that American telcos offer look like it was designed for sale at Wal/K-Mart? I want a simple phone that is encased in brushed aluminum or magnesium and/or carbon fibre. The keys should be aluminum, with laser etched backlit numbers and letters. I'm tired of cheap plastic shit that wears off within a few months of use.
- Lifetime warranty, including the flip mechanism of course.
- I will pay $1000 for this phone, but I refuse to be locked into any contract or network.
