Tom Glenn's Blog, page 47

Wine (2)

I only eat two meals a day and have wine with both except once or twice a week when I have eggs with the first of the two meals. Normally, I drink only about a third of a glass of wine with my meal. I find that amount plenty to enjoy the wine fully without having wine left over at the end.

I have just discovered a wine called merlot, which, for some reason, I have ignored in the past. I am struck by its subtle flavor. Its “nose” or “bouquet” (that is, its aroma when smelled in the glass) is different from that of cabernet sauvignon and quite appealing. I look forward to a whole new wine adventure.

As I advance in age, more and more pleasures now illude me. For close to a decade, due to a botched knee replacement, I’ve been unable to run, which had been, for most of my life, a great pleasure for me. Trained as a musician, I have always loved music, but now deafness due to an old war wound constrains me. All my life, I have lifted weights, more because I thoroughly enjoyed it than because it was good for me. Now weight lifting has become more work than pleasure.

But wine? Still as lovely as ever. A source of continuing pleasure. I cherish my good fortune.

Wine

Everywhere I have been in the world, people drink wine. As far as I can tell, wine is the closest thing we have to a universal beverage. In countries other than the U.S., even children drink wine. Because grapes used to make wine only grow in two fairly narrow bands on earth, one in the northern hemisphere, one in the southern, wine must be imported to many countries. Britain, for example, is for the most part too cold to grow grapes, so virtually all wine consumed there is brought in from abroad—usually from France.

I first learned to drink wine when I was 21, the legal age for alcohol consumption when I was growing up. In my youth, I liked wine much better than any other alcoholic beverage and still do. I grew up in northern California where wine was cheap and plentiful and almost universally consumed. Early on, I discovered cabernet sauvignon, which quickly became my favorite wine.

Some years ago, I contracted with a cabinet maker to make me a wine chest of dark blond maple wood. It is 3 feet, 3 inches high; 4 feet, 6 inches wide; and 3 feet, 3 inches deep, with two sliding doors. Behind the door on the right side is a set of drawers large enough to hold a total of 12 magnums (1.5 liters) of wine; on the left is drawers with room for 21 standard-size bottles (750 milliliters). In the middle are two wine glass racks suspending upside down 18 stemmed glasses of fine crystal. Two or three times a year, I go wine shopping and refill the chest. I specialize in inexpensive cabernets costing less than ten dollars a bottle. Even so, my wine trips end up costing me between $100 and $200.

More next time.

Wisdom

My blog post on intelligence got me to thinking about wisdom, what it is and how it works. Once again, turning to Merriam-Webster, wisdom is “the ability to discern inner qualities and relationships.” I think of it as the aptitude for arriving at conclusions that are both sensible and well-reasoned. Its opposite is foolishness.

We often associate wisdom with age. My sense is that as people grow older and accumulate more and more experience, they come to appreciate subtler causal relationships not obvious to younger, shallower people. They see that any result might have not just one but multiple causes. They understand that actions have not just one but many interrelated outcomes, sometimes of mixed desirability.

Wisdom, in short, addresses life’s manifold complexity. The best-known wise man in history was Solomon. The Bible depicts his reign as an era of unprecedented prosperity due to his wisdom, a quality bestowed upon him by God. He is credited with having written the Proverbs also known as the Wisdom of Solomon. This book of the Bible goes by both names because of the sage advice found therein.

Hence wisdom. One can work to attain wisdom by education and study, but in the end, only living and experience will create it. It is one of the few benefits of getting old.

The Other Intelligence

A few days ago, I offered my thoughts on intelligence, which I defined as simply facts about a foreign nation. But as a reader pointed out, the word intelligence has another, entirely different meaning: the degree of mental ability. Merriam-Webster defines it as “the faculty of understanding or the capacity to know or apprehend.” As with most noncorporeal concepts, there are many versions of that definition: the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills; the skilled use of reason; the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations; the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (such as tests); mental acuteness or shrewdness; capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.; manifestation of a high mental capacity; the faculty of understanding.

What it all boils down to is the ability to think well.

While I give myself high marks for creativity, I’ve never considered myself especially intelligent. I think more slowly than others and tend to say nothing until I have had time to think through facts and ideas. While that tends to make me the quiet member of a group, it also assures that I put my foot in my mouth less often.

Others sometimes credit me with intelligence. My own estimate is that I am less intelligent than wise—I’m smart enough to keep my mouth shut unless I know what I’m talking about, an acuity not too common among most of the people I know.

U.S. Childhood Poverty

I continue to be disturbed by the unfair income inequality in the U.S. The top 1 percent of U.S. earners in 2020, according to one source, had an average income of $823,763. The average salary in the U.S. in 2020 was $56,310. The disparity is too large for us to tolerate.

One illustration of our financial inequity is our child poverty rate. From July 15, 2021 to December 15, 2021, the United States instituted something called the expanded Child Tax Credit. It featured direct monthly payments to families of up to $300 per child under 6 and $250 per month for children between 6 and 17, phasing out payments for families earning more than $112,000 a year.

The effect on childhood poverty is telling. Before the experiment, America’s child poverty rate was among the highest of all advanced nations. Nearly 16 percent of our children under 5 were impoverished. During the experiment, child poverty in America dropped by roughly a third, down to 12 percent. The number of households with kids reporting not having enough to eat also fell by about a third. But after the experiment, the rate of child poverty rose again, from 12 percent to 17 percent. More than a third of families with children in the U.S. now say they are struggling to cover ordinary costs (food, utilities, housing).

So why don’t we restore the Child Tax Credit? Republicans say the program costs too much. But the Congressional Budget Office estimates that permanently expanding the Child Tax Credit would cost $1.7 trillion over the next ten years. That’s less than what America’s rich and big corporations will save over the next ten years from the Trump Republican tax cut, which went into effect in 2018. Repeal that gift to the rich, and there’s plenty of money to pay for our children.

In other words, restoration of something approaching the beginnings of equity is within our grasp. Now all we have to do is use our majority to pass it into law.

Ukraine

As I watch events unfold as Russia invades Ukraine, several factors are becoming more apparent.

The first is that the Russian military is both large and incompetent. Its soldiers lack motivation and patriotism. Its logistics are not up to the challenges of an invasion. And Vladimir Putin hopelessly underestimated the will of the Ukrainian government and people to resist his offensive.

Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, who is only 44 years old, has shown remarkable courage and determination. He has aroused patriotism and bravery in his people as they fight back against the Russians. This improbable leader, a comedian by profession, is risking his life by heading the government and nation fighting Putin. If he survives—and the chances are not encouraging—he will undoubtedly head the government-in-exile that will continue to defy Russian assaults on his homeland with guerrilla warfare.

Ukraine will not win this war on the battlefield. The Russian force, for all its ineptitude, is too large and too well-armed for its tiny neighbor to repel. But Ukraine will not surrender. It will continue to harass the conquering Russian forces with an insurrection that will deprive Russia of peace. And I believe that in the end, though that may be far into the future, Ukraine will exhaust the Russians, who will, like the Americans in Vietnam, finally quit and go home.

Meanwhile, Russia’s standing in the world is so damaged by Putin’s action against Ukraine that it will not recover during my lifetime. In the final reckoning, the invasion will hurt Russia far more than it will help it.

Putin will go down in history as the dictator who undermined Russia.

Kinds of Intelligence (2)

The different varieties of intelligence that the U.S. government is involved in offer some indication of the size of the U.S. intelligence effort. There are sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies. The U.S. intelligence budget (excluding the Military Intelligence Program) in fiscal year 2013 (the most recent year for which I could find unclassified data) was appropriated as $52.7 billion. It has almost certainly grown in recent years. How many people are involved is far from clear. In 2010 (again, the most recent figures I could find) the intelligence community reportedly included 854,000 people holding top-secret clearances.

The U.S. intelligence community, in other words, is a silent giant surveilling other nations so as to protect us. We almost never hear anything about the intelligence apparatus in the press. The lack of public information is a testament to the integrity of thousands of intelligence operants who are devoted to remaining silent lest their ability to detect what our enemies are up to would disappear.

As a former member of the brotherhood, I bow in respect before them.

Kinds of Intelligence

My recent blog on the value of intelligence to our national health brought questions on what intelligence means and what are the different kinds of intelligence.

First of all, what is intelligence? The definition I quoted earlier from Merriam-Webster reads “evaluated information concerning an enemy or possible enemy or a possible theater of operations and the conclusions drawn therefrom.” I define intelligence as simply facts about a foreign nation.

It turns out that intelligence comes in many different forms. The list of intelligence varieties I compiled from open sources does not include any classified information. Here it is:

Geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) is information gathered from satellite and aerial photography, or mapping/terrain data. A subcategory is imagery intelligence (IMINT), the result of aerial or satellite observation and photography.

Measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) is data derived from an array of signatures (distinctive characteristics) of fixed or dynamic target sources. According to the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Center for MASINT Studies and Research, MASINT is split into six major disciplines: electro-optical, nuclear, radar, geophysical, materials, and radiofrequency.

Technical intelligence (TECHINT) results from analysis of weapons and equipment used by the armed forces of foreign nations. A subcategory is medical intelligence (MEDINT), the analysis of medical records and/or actual physiological examinations to determine health and/or particular ailments and allergic conditions for consideration.

Cyber or digital network intelligence (CYBINT or DNINT), information gathered from cyberspace.

Financial intelligence (FININT), the analysis of monetary transactions.

And finally, the form of intelligence I did most of my work in: signals intelligence (SIGINT), the intercept and exploitation of foreign radio signals. SIGINT’s subcategories are Communications intelligence (COMINT), Electronic intelligence (ELINT)—that is intercept and exploitation of electronic signals that do not contain speech or text (which are considered COMINT)—and foreign instrumentation signals intelligence (FISINT) the collection and analysis of telemetry data from a missile or sometimes from aircraft tests (sometime called telemetry intelligence or TELINT).

More next time.

Asian-Americans: Smarter?

As regular readers of this blog know, I have a long history of work in Asia, especially in China and Vietnam. I speak the languages of both of those countries and got to know their citizens. And I don’t deny a deep fondness for the Chinese and the Vietnamese.

Today, the U.S. is home to many former residents of China and Vietnam as well as those from other Asian countries. All that I have talked to express gratitude for the opportunity to live here. They also show an inclination that sets them aside from other Americans: their devotion to learning.

Nearly all Asians I have known have worked hard to educate themselves earning college and port-graduate degrees. They cherish learning far more than their western counterparts. We western Americans often look upon schooling as an unpleasant necessity, and we characteristically avoid as much of it as we can. I always stood out from my fellow Americans because of my love of learning and ended up earning a master’s degree, a doctorate, and then some. The great reward of education for me was learning how to think better. Because I am a writer by vocation, clear and vivid thinking is invaluable.

So I share with Asian citizens a love of study not usually found among Americans with a European heritage. And I conclude that, yes, my Asian friends are indeed the smarter ones: they see treasures where the rest of us are blind.

Intelligence: The Hidden Treasure

I spent thirty-five years of my life working in intelligence, defined by Merriam-Webster as “evaluated information concerning an enemy or possible enemy or a possible theater of operations and the conclusions drawn therefrom.” I’d define it as facts about a foreign nation. Because a nation that is the target of intelligence can so easily conceal all information about itself, the collection, analysis, and stockpiling of information about it is almost always kept secret. And the degree of classification of intelligence information as confidential, secret, top secret, codeword, and compartmented most often depends on the degree of damage or loss that its revelation would entail.

During my years in the “business,” as we called it, I knew of a great variety of events and situations of utmost importance to the U.S. that were never made public. So often, the use of intelligence prevented a disaster that the American public knew nothing of. The entire set of events—from detection, intervention, and prevention—was never revealed to the citizens because its publication would have resulted in the loss of an invaluable intelligence source of great importance to maintaining the well-being of the U.S. After a certain number of years (my guess is fifty), classified data can be made public. But very often, the means used to obtain the information is still in use. Revelation of the data would point toward how it was obtained. So the information itself is not declassified.

U.S. citizens have no grounds for complaint. The silent world of classified detection, action, and reaction plays out in our defense without our knowledge. We are saved from disaster without knowing it. So be it.

And God bless those who, unbeknownst to us and unthanked by us, spare us from catastrophe.