Friday Four

1. My son has, at the age of three, started developing the concept of "winning." Each day, when I drive the kids home, he will race to the doorstep as soon as I unbuckle the car seat, and announce, "I win!" when he gets there.

One day, he stopped for a moment to play in the autumn leaves, instead. Encountering me on the opposite side of the car, and not realizing I was there to help his sister out of her seat, he pointed to the car and told me to get her out -- and then immediately dashed towards the doorstep. Nice tactic, Little Man!

2. Last weekend, I was playing some James Brown in the kitchen while I cooked. Little Man came by, and paused, looking puzzled about something. Then he asked, "What's that noise?"

I could well end up using that line on him in about another decade.

And while I'm on the subject of memorable quotes, he said the following after we took them out trick-or-treating: "I love the Halloween."

3. If you liked Brian Phillips's Individual Rights and Government Wrongs, you may be interested in his recently-released The Innovator Versus the Collective. I'm about a quarter of the way through the Kindle edition now.

Phillips has also started a new group blog, Objectively Houston, whose latest posts now appear in the blogroll here.

4. Reader Snedcat has pointed me to a long, but amusing and thought-provoking analysis of the Lord of the Rings Battle of Minas Tirith by "The Angry Staff Officer." One snippet from the analysis, in terms of "the six warfighting functions" is as follows:

We have already noted how the intelligence assets of Gondor had been compromised by Saruman. However, due to good compartmentalization, the enemy was not aware that Gondor did have one small Special Forces strike group in the area of operations. Since Gandalf executed solid knowledge management by not sharing his knowledge of the strike group's existence to Denethor, the enemy was caught off balance by its arrival.

I haven't had a chance yet, but I look forward to some more of ASO's self-described, "peddling [of] history, alcohol, defense, and sometimes all three at once."

-- CAV