Someone You Should Know About

I've been doing this Internet blog routine for several years now, since shortly after it all took off after 9/11, when heightened interest in the military combined with technological advances to give the great unwashed a means of expressing our thoughts about the issues of the day. Now we're all bloggers.

One of the very first bloggers I encountered way back when was Phil Carter. We all know the rest of that story, but this isn't about that.

I discovered another blog shortly after I found Intel Dump. This blog, http://armchairgeneralist.typepad.com/ run by a young officer by the name of Jason Sigger, intrigued me no end. Jason is a Chemical Corps officer, now no longer on active duty, so he leans heavily towards what to me has always been a pretty incomprehensible line of work. Good for guys like Jason; guys like me don't understand half of what he's talking about. In fact, the only time I dare weigh in on his area of expertise is to say something like, "I hate the term WMD because you can't equate nukes with bugs and gas." I think Jason agrees with this, BTW.

Fortunately, Jason, who's become a good blog friend, does more than bugs and gas. He makes some great catches—for example, it was Jason who alerted me to the military tea baggers and birthers—and his blog is also pretty elegant and user-friendly. What prompted me to do this unsolicited commercial was a post Jason made today referencing friend Seydlitz's excellent work on Mark Twain. Now, I'm a big Mark Twain fan. When I was a youth, I read Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Connecticut Yankee, et al. I haven't read everything of Twain's because he was such a prolific writer, but I've seen enough of his work outside of the famous stuff to know he was a serious observer of the American scene. I found something new from Twain this evening at Armchair Generalist. This prompted a post that I've been meaning to do for some time.

Go to Armchair Generalist. Read the catch on Twain/Clemons. You'll like it. And you'll understand why Jason posted it. It's relevant to much of what we discuss. And then, please, if you don't already do so, make it a habit to check in with Jason. I do it on a daily basis and he never disappoints.