So I might have strecthed the truth

I realize that I promised you all details of my adventures down south during December and January. Then I thought that if I kept you all informed via this blog I wouldn’t have anything left to tell you when I get back to the States this summer. So, instead I have put your tax dollars to good use by lying in my rack reading some good books, listening to some quality music, and thinking about life. This is what I have come up with.
Let’s start with the book I’ve just started reading called “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman. I’ve only made it through 75 of 635 pages but so far it is a very interesting read. In a nutshell it is about the globalization of the economy and how technology has shrunk our world so much that it is no longer round but flat. From what I’ve gotten out it so far is that America is screwed. The outsourcing of jobs to India is happening at a ridiculous rate everything that can be sent through a fiber optic line in the form of a digital information packet is flying under the Pacific and Indian Oceans to the much cheaper job markets of Bangalore and other cities in India. Why can an Indian be ecstatic about making $15,000 a year doing a job that an American does grudgingly did for $80,000? Does that mean that the Indian is getting severely under paid or that the American is getting ridiculously over paid? Friedman interviewed the CEO of Reuters news service, Tom Glocer about the outsourcing of many of the many journalistic “grunt” jobs like posting raw data snippets to websites and TV programs. Glocer said that by outsourcing the mundane basics it leaves the real journalism to the real journalists. “That needs a higher journalistic skill set- someone in the market with contacts, who knows who the best industry analysts are, who has taken the right people to lunch.” A Reuter’s inter-office memo stated that this out-sourcing of the low-skill will free up American intellect and capital to do more “sophisticated work.” But I have some problems with these lines of thought. I am not nor will I ever be a journalist (ask Mom about me and papers!) but I don’t see how someone could achieve the “higher journalistic skill set” without doing the grunt work. I don’t think they sell it anywhere. I’m pretty sure it comes from the same place that any other “higher skill set” comes from: starting with the grunt work, getting good at that and slowly moving up the chain. There is a reason I didn’t get put in charge of a squad the second I graduated from boot camp (even though I am awesome…again ask Mom). I had to learn how to field day my room (cleaning it really, really good), I had to learn how to pound nails and cut boards to the right length, I had to learn how to motivate myself. Once I had this all down, I got promoted and was given more and more responsibility. Doesn’t it stand to reason that if we out source all the grunt work and just focus on the “sophisticated stuff” sooner or later we won’t have the ability to do that very same sophisticated work because no one will have spent time in the trenches learning the ins and out of their profession slogging through the mundane basics.

About Time!!

Well, the delay has been significant but that just means there is more for me to type and for you all to read. So right now I will just give you a brief overview and then I will get into more depth when I have more time to type....so in a couple of days... So lets see. My squad got detached from the rest of the platoon for awhile in order to do a bunch of bridging. We took out 4 military style bridges and put in 4 culvert crossing....this included working an extra long day on Christmas....oh well.....after that we came back to Dwyer for a couple of days and then headed back out to build a combat outpost for a grunt battalion. Now we are regrouping and refitting and getting ready to head back out into that thing i like to call the desert for more base constuction. More details will come soon I PROMISE!


thanks for all the prayers

Dan