Formative military strategist; interesting with respects to systems thinking; but sod that, he also coined Red versus Blue. For that alone: +1.

"For 27 months, Ian Fisher, his parents and friends, and the U.S. Army allowed Denver Post reporters and a photographer to watch and chronicle his recruitment, induction, training, deployment, and, finally, his return from combat. A selection of photos from Ian’s journey are posted below." The link to the full project page isn't working at the moment, but the pictures alone are striking.

"See, the RAF reckons research has shown them that the best drone pilot candidates are those who are experienced video game players, rather than experienced pilots. Sounds crazy at first, but when you think about it, pilots are experienced at actually flying. But flying something remotely via a 2D monitor? That's a gamer's area of expertise."

"I won’t rant about how our tax dollars pay for these images and how we deserve better. But what I do find alarming is that these documents are used to brief major decision makers. These decision makers may know a thing or two about policy and politics, but if decoding and understanding the armed forces budget is the goal of these documents, then there is a huge failure here." Datafail and slidecrime, all under one roof.

"The picture transfixes us because it looks like the truth, but, looking at it, we can only imagine what that truth is: torture, execution, a scene staged for the camera?" Excellent New Yorker article by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris.

"For years we have done our training in a certain way... it might be better to replace some of those generic exercises with others which will be better in an urban environment because of the work we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Quite remarkable, if only for its density and level of detail.