I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of the “Force Multiplier” lately. For those of you not familiar with it, it’s pretty simple. If you have a force of 10 men with bolt action rifles, issuing them each semi-automatic rifles will multiply their firepower significantly. Thus, when compared to a bolt-action rifle, a semi-automatic rifle can be considered a force multiplier.

I believe the term has its origins in military strategy. Its most significant historical MISUSE, to my knowledge, was when the germans introduced the machine gun to the field of operations in WWI. and some German strategists believed the war would be over in DAYS. According to my source (my Dad, now beyond questioning matters mortal), these Germans blithely assumed that every bullet fired from a machine gun would be as effective as each bullet fired from a bolt-action rifle. They’d never seen “spray and pray.”

Anyway, force multipliers… I’ve been watching the final season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer for the first time (do NOT post spoilers in here. I’ll delete your post and then ban you. Clear?) and it has AGAIN occurred to me that the Scooby Gang and their allies need force multipliers. Swords are better than stakes, and crossbows are better than swords, but what they REALLY need is a semi-automatic shotgun that fires hardwood-jacketed slugs. A paintball gun with pellets full of garlic/holywater slurry would be less effective, but it would keep the Vamps far enough back for safety, and it would be less likely to kill your friends. Of course firearms are anathema in the Buffyverse — we ONLY see them as instruments of evil — so their non-inclusion is not a matter of Joss Whedon not thinking of them. He just put a rule in front of his writers saying “No guns. Period.”

Then again, in the Angel universe (again, no spoilers. We watch these for the first time when the DVDs come out) you’ve got Gunn and his gang, who, as I recall, DID use force multipliers. They’re not stupid. They’ve got no slayer backing them up, so they tooled up for the job, and then got the job done.

Force multipliers appear in other contexts. Keenspot, for instance, is a force-multiplier for webcartoonists. The cross-promotion it provides ensures that even comics that really, really SUCK will have a reasonably large audience — or, at the very least, they’ll get exposed to a much larger number of people than they would if they depended on word-of-mouth. The “force” of “people looking at a web page” is multiplied by the links of the newsbox and the dropdowns. By comparison, Modern Tales lacks this force-multiplier, and compensates by charging much more money for content. The subscription model can be viewed as a massive force-multiplier if your only source of revenue has been ad banners, but, like the WWI machine gun, you can’t compare apples and oranges when you do the math.

When I look at the cartooning work I do, ownership of the intellectual property I create (Schlock Mercenary) is a force-multiplier. The custom commercial work I’m doing currently pays quite a bit better, but I only get paid ONCE. The Schlock I’ve already drawn will continue to generate revenue for me long after I’ve drawn it.

On that note, work progesses on Schlock Mercenary Book I. I’m not stupid enough to think that every Schlock reader is going to buy the book (“I’m RICH!”), but even if only 1% of them do I’ll be ahead of the game. I’ll say more when my publisher says I can say more, and believe you me I’ll be saying it until YOU are blue in the face, but until then you’ll just have to wait.

I’m interested to see in what other contexts (especially academic/scientific) the term “force multiplier” appears. “What’s that you say? Google is my friend? *sigh* That’s no fun.”

–Howard

We awoke this morning to four inches of particularly pristine snow. It rained yesterday afternoon and evening, so the air had already been washed clean, and then by midnight the snow was coming down — not the slushy stuff, either. This was perfect sledding snow. It wasn’t high mountain powder, mind you, but it was close. The spruce in back was draped in it, and the maples and honey locusts with their bare branches were perfect winter sculptures in wood and snow. Then, around 9:30 am, the sun broke through the clouds and everything shone.

There’s something wonderful about beginning a new year with a visible reminder of Isaiah’s messianic promise:
Isa. 1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

I don’t need a parade, or a football game today. I’ve had a better show, with far more meaning in it. Whether or not you believe in the doctrines of repentance and atonement, white still symbolizes purity, and the New Year still holds forth the promise of doing things better this time around.

The footprints in the snow symbolize nothing. Those are evidence that my children know good sledding when they see it. The landscaped “hill” in my back yard is only about 4 feet high, but to hear the whooping and hollering it must have seemed like the Pass of Caradhras. Complete with little snow-covered hobbitses.

–Howard

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has a page providing high-level details of the aid they’re providing in Southeast Asia.

Link.

Among the highlights — missionaries (the nice young men in white shirts and ties) are serving as translators for those looking for loved ones in Thailand, and in Hong Kong the saints are assembling some 30,000 hygiene kits for distribution in Sri Lanka. This Sunday the First Presidency of the Church will encourage all members to be especially generous with their Fast Offerings (monthly donation of the value of two meals which are skipped as part of the monthly fast). Fast Offerings are used exclusively for welfare, and the Church is opening welfare coffers for use in Southeast Asia at this time.

It’s nice to know what the money is being spent on, and it’s even nicer to know that church members in the area are an active part of relief efforts.

–Howard

With the official death toll now uncomfortably above 100,000, John Budd of UNICEF said, of the relief efforts in Indonesia, “it needs to be almost a military campaign.”

ALMOST? Pull your head out, John. The ONLY organizations in the world equipped for this kind of operation are major militaries. You need aircraft carriers, infantry transport, massive supply lines, portable airfields, mobile hospitals, and that most maligned of temporary governments, “martial law.”

In Lucifer’s Hammer (Science fiction about a meteor-spawned tsunami that wipes out all Pacific coasts, among other things) Niven and Pournelle tell us that “civilization is three meals away from collapse.” The greatest danger the survivors, the refugees, the millions of homeless in Southeast Asia currently face is not pestilence nor famine. Those horesmen have already ridden into town, and they’ll reap their share. War, however, is the apocalyptic rider we must now concern ourselves with. The survivors are at risk from each other. Not all starving people will resort to murder to save their own lives, or the lives of their children, but not all of them have to. It only takes a few, maybe one in 20, or even one in 100. The only way to stop them is to be better armed, highly visible, extremely organized, AND able to feed everyone.

I’m not trying to make the survivors out to be warmongering, savage rabble. I’m simply pointing out that they are people, just like you and me, and they won’t just lie down and die if there’s no food to be had. Civilization is three meals away from collapse.

The UN, UNICEF, the Red Cross, and others are ill equipped to deal with the complete fall of civilization across a large swath of geography. They don’t have the full suite of tools at their disposal. I hope that the United States, for one, doesn’t make the mistake of simply handing the UN a wad of cash. We should be leading the charge with ships and planes, with personnel and materiel, and demonstrating that the most powerful military force on the planet is good for more than just hurting people and breaking things.

–Howard